Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!ames!rex!uflorida!novavax!fenix!jmagee
From: jmagee@fenix.UUCP (Jim Magee)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: What kinds of things would you want in the GNU OS?
Message-ID: <2622@fenix.UUCP>
Date: 8 Jun 89 13:44:56 GMT
References: <106326@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <4315@ficc.uu.net> <338@arc.UUCP> <208@sopwith.UUCP>
Organization: Gould CSD, Fort Lauderdale, FL
Lines: 34
In-reply-to: snoopy@sopwith.UUCP's message of 4 Jun 89 18:01:28 GMT

In article <338@arc.UUCP> steve@arc.UUCP (Steve Savitzky) writes:

|For networking I rather like the way Apollo handles a networked name
|space (it's about the ONLY thing to like about Apollo :-) -- Root is /
|and the network layer above it is //, so a complete pathname looks
|like (e.g.) //steve/usr/bin
|
|IMHO this is better than the way NFS does it (i.e. mounting
|filesystems in random places) -- everything is in exactly one place in
|the hierarchy.

I agree that having to mount another filesystem to get at network
directories is an awful way to do things.  First it requires root privilege
to do it, and it also fills up kernel mount tables with lots of NFS
mounts.

I have to disagree with the // concept though.  It adds special meaning to
something that in BSD just means /.  I know of several programs that
were written for BSD that just tack the / out front of a directory and would
break with this new interpretation of //.  (Please, I didn't write them so
don't blame me for this one)

Mach introduces a better concept, I think.  It uses a more robust symbolic
link mechanism that allows you create a symbolic link to something on the
network.  (I think it is Mach, but I can't find it in the manual, maybe it
is in the Andrew Filesystem)  This seems to be a better solution.  Every
user can create one, they are stored in the filesystem not the kernel, you
can mount a file or a directory (try that with //), and the concept can be
expanded to specify the network filesystem type that you want.
-- 
Jim Magee - Unix Development		| Encore Computer Corp
jmagee@gould.com			| 6901 W Sunrise Blvd  MS407
...!uunet!gould!jmagee			| Ft Lauderdale, FL 33313
"I speak for nobody..."			| (305) 587-2900 x4925