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Re: version numbers, NFILE, Suns and CHAOSnet



#     o - Write a unix NFILE server.  This would be the best of all.
#         Then you could have it hack version numbers transparently, and
#         all the power of this protocol.

Speaking of which, has anyone done this (outside Symbolics, I mean)?
I asked our local Symbolics technical rep. to try to track down the
internal NFILE-for-UNIX implementation, but he didn't seem to have
much luck. I remember at the Washington SLUG, someone mentioned this
existed within the company. They seemed to have great plans for it at
the time.

# You could also use a filesystem with version numbers.  I cannot
# understand how, in this day and age, people still advocate a
# filesystem which has not caught up with the 1960's.

Never having lived on a filesystem with version numbers (except on lispm's,
where I mostly turn it off), it isn't clear to me why this is a good philosophy.
Could someone enlighten natives of the non-version number filesystems?
I recognize that having version numbers is a generalization of a filesystem
without version numbers, but what are the overhead costs, and are they
worthwhile compared to other approaches (from both system & user pt. of view)?
What do people use it for, that makes it worthwhile?

Lastly, has anyone tried porting the UNIX CHAOSnet kernel software to Suns?
We'd prefer to get (pay for) TCP-based NFILE code, but in its absence we don't
have much choice, do we... If someone has done this, I'd like to hear from them.
What has Symbolics said about future directions for their network basis? We
got a questionnaire some time ago (a month after the response deadline...)
about this, and I'm curious about the plans. Personally, I'd like to boot
worldloads stored on a UNIX machine's disks, all via IP of course. Sigh.

rayan