Re: [9fans] 'wall' messages

[Jim Choate <ravage@einstein.ssz.com>]

On Wed, 8 Oct 2003, Charles Forsyth wrote:

> you might think to notify people that the cpu server is going down
> by having it access devices imported from the terminal, but
> don't forget that the file server has no such access, and in many
> ways it's far more serious to have the file server go away.
> most reasonable solutions to the latter will deal with the former,
> including some of those suggested so far.

I have to agree with this. The main reason that I find this sort of
fail-over critical is if a process does die, if the file server is still
around we have some hope of restarting the job on another set of cpu
servers without the user even being aware, other than longer execution
times. If the file server dies the namespace is gone so we've no way to
ensure the intended namespace, we may not be able to build it up again
without user intervention. I find this most critical within the context of
what I call 'free run' agents. I envision a point when there will be
enough 'public' servers available that processes will be able to run
forever (for all intents and purposes), this is most important for example
with anonymous remailers, black nets/data havens, etc. In addition it
would allow the creation of 'public' search engines that simply were not
censorable because they weren't running in any particular place [1].

This of course means there needs to be a mechanism to track restarts and
alert the user if they're having too many.

[1] My personal belief is that this will be how the first self-aware AI
    comes about, a pure accident due to programs interacting and trying
    to survive. We'll get up one morning and all the phones will be
    ringing ;)

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God exists because mathematics is consistent, and the Devil exist because we
can't prove it.
                          Andre Weil, in H. Eves, Mathematical Circles Adieu

      ravage@ssz.com                            jchoate@open-forge.com
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