Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!wang!comm.wang.com!lws
From: lws@comm.wang.com (Lyle Seaman)
Newsgroups: comp.os.misc
Subject: Re: Test for distributedness
Message-ID: <1990Apr2.190239.13905@comm.wang.com>
Date: 2 Apr 90 19:02:39 GMT
References: <6067@star.cs.vu.nl> <2604@quiche.cs.mcgill.ca> <6106@star.cs.vu.nl> <6548@becker.UUCP> <6117@star.cs.vu.nl>
Organization: Wang Labs, Platform Comms.
Lines: 28

ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) writes:
>There must be a common pool of resources shared equally among all users,
>just like in a timesharing system.  Remember, the goal of the system designers 

I'm not sure this is an ideal goal of a distributed system.  The concept
of priorities has been around for a long time from the centralized system
approach, and I think a reasonable approach to these concepts would be
something like what Sprite does.  The distributed priority would then be
the composition of the priorities on the individual machines.  This would 
allow me to have at a minimum, the resources available on my own machine.
If someone in my environment is wasteful of resources, there will be a limit
to that person's ability to impair my access to resources.  This is one
of the central arguments in the ongoing "single-user vs. shared" debate.
One of the nice things about using many small systems instead of one
large system is that I don't have to share my machine with any of a 
small group of people who never delete old files...  And I don't have to
share with some of the other people, who (instead of keeping track of
what is where) grep the whole directory hierarchy several times a day.
Or with those who recompile every piece of source code, instead of 
using even a dumb make...

But I see your point about the test.



-- 
Lyle                      Wang             lws@comm.wang.com
508 967 2322         Lowell, MA, USA       uunet!comm.wang.com!lws