From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: krewat@kilonet.net (Arthur Krewat) Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2017 18:08:01 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] RFS was: Re: UNIX of choice these days? In-Reply-To: References: <20170923091704.GD10152@darioniedermann.it> Message-ID: <99177bf0-7ab8-1353-f2ce-842cf5584914@kilonet.net> Also, Clem when you say "function shipping" - that sounds like RPC. On 9/24/2017 3:54 PM, Clem Cole wrote: > > > On Sun, Sep 24, 2017 at 1:51 PM, Arthur Krewat > wrote: > > Where does RFS (AT&T System III) fit in all of this? > > ​Well it was not in PWB 3.0 - aka System ​III. > > > > ​.... > > > Just looking for history on RFS if any. > > David Arnovitz's work -- Dave worked for us at Masscomp in Atlanta​ > afterwards.  IIRC Summit pushed it out via System V, it was not part > of System III (David did not even work for BTL when System II was > released). > > RFS was based on ideas Peter had used in Eighth Edition file system. > When we did EFS @ Masscomp,Perry Flinn and I were both aware of > Peter's work (I had talked to him a few times).  As we finished it, we > hired Dave in Atlanta and told me about us a little about RFS although > it had not yet been released.   If you look, my EFS paper was the > alternate paper given against Rusty's when the NFS paper published - > difference - Masscomp would not give away EFS - different story]. > > Anyway, Dave's RFS used Peter's file system switch that was in > Eighth Edition.  I used something similar for EFS. Which was not as > clean as Steve Klieman's VFS layer; which I think Sun did right.   But > NFS got the whole stateless thing wrong which I was pleased over the > years to see I was right (the whole point of the EFS paper was if it's > a real UNIX file system, then their will be shared state and its how > do you recover from an error). > > RFS, EFS and Weinberger's FS all did stateful recovery.  RFS used a > function ship model IIRC.  I did not get to look at the code until > long after it was released so I never studied it in detail and I never > ran it.   But he had Peter's work available to him, so I suspect there > is a lot common ideas.  I think Peter used function shipping also.   >  [EFS did not, it was more ad hoc as what we shipped and what we did > not.   That was a performance thing for us as we had Apollo down the > street and were very, very concerned with what Ageis/Domain could do]. > > That said, NFS had a really simple model, which (in practice) was good > enough for many things and more importantly, Sun gave the code away > and made it a standard.  So the old less is more; Christensen > disruption theory of technology came through. > > Masscomp (and Apollo with Domain) both had 'better' distributed file > systems, but 'lost' because (like DEC were many of their people - > particularly in marketing - came) - did not get it.   Tried to keep to > closed like VMS et al... and it ultimately died.  NFS was 'free' and > did the job.   What was there not to like. > > In hindsight, I wish I could have understood that then.  Cudo's the > Kleiman for what he did! > > Clem -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: