Re: [9fans] Multi-dimensional filesystem

[Bakul Shah <bakul@bitblocks.com>]

On Wed, 15 Aug 2012 21:38:43 EDT erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>  wrote:
>
> i was thinking of file server in the traditional (ahem) plan 9 sense,
> a network service that responds to 9p rather than a traditional (boring)
> unix-style store.

To me the plan9 model is the "boring" one. Boringly simple.
And I like it that way!  Regardless, both can be used to
distribute files.

> and as such, i was thinking of a server that simply distributed requests
> among a set of servers.  so that
>
> > > >     echo "date" > /net/my-nodes/foo
> > > >     chmod +x /net/my-nodes/foo
>
> would work with the normal tools on a normal kernel.  all the distribution
> would be part of a purpose-built fs.

How would this work? Someone has to map "/net/my-nodes/foo" to
a set of files. Either a program iterates over the list or you
push this list processing into the "purpose built" filesystem.
[Actually the latter is what I was thinking of -- A "9p*"
protocol would return a list of file handles, and "rc*" would
be an APLish version of rc]