From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] venti ports and productization In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 21 Oct 2003 11:35:24 EDT." From: "Russ Cox" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-ID: <1947.1066751431.1@t40.swtch.com> Message-Id: Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2003 11:50:31 -0400 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 7680253c-eacc-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 > that's very interesting. my comment about "why rewrite" wasn't > intended to necessarily imply it should've been done that way, > although i realize it probably came off that way. what about > the current implementation is at issue? and (the big question) > is it expected that the new stuff will be protocol compatable? The protocol is almost completely trivial. There are only two interesting messages -- read and write. So ultimately it really doesn't matter. We have had problems with Venti since the Seans left, but I am not convinced that we really need to start over (perhaps I am the only one!). We have had some problems with the big Venti server, but my understanding is that all of the problems appeared to be disk corruption rather than software error. I think the biggest problem is that before the Seans left they didn't get the system scanning itself for damage regularly. Disks are going to fail and we need to replace them, but we haven't been. This does contrast with the WORM, where the platters fail much less frequently. Then again, the amount of code involved is so small that I do think that bulk alone doesn't justify sticking with the current code if you want to start over. If I started over, I suspect I would end up writing substantially the same code, so I don't see the point. Russ