It's Alive

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Received: from CLAUDE.LAAC-AI.Dialnet.Symbolics.COM by ALAN.LAAC-AI.Dialnet.Symbolics.COM via CHAOS with CHAOS-MAIL id 40494; Thu 21-Sep-89 10:13:27 PDT
Date: Thu, 21 Sep 89 10:13 PDT
From: Robert D. Pfeiffer <RDP@ALAN.LAAC-AI.Dialnet.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: It's Alive 
To: SLUG@ALAN.LAAC-AI.Dialnet.Symbolics.COM
In-Reply-To: Your message of 21 Sep 89 01:13 PDT
Message-ID: <19890921171307.1.RDP@CLAUDE.LAAC-AI.Dialnet.Symbolics.COM>

    Date: Wed, 20 Sep 89 16:28 PDT
    From: Chucko@VERMITHRAX.SCH.Symbolics.COM (Charles R. Fry)

	Date: Wed, 20 Sep 89 11:23:04 EST
	From: bouma@cs.purdue.edu

	    Why is it that when I make changes to the NAMESPACE some of the
	machines don't notice? For instance, one machine on the network went
	away, and we got another (unix machines), so I edited the namespace
	appropriately. But some of the machines still list that deleted machine
	as a dead connection in PEEK on NETWORK? Rebooting does not help, but
	Reset Network gets rid of it until the next time I reboot.

    As the Namespace Editor tells you when it finishes saving an object:
     Other servers and hosts will not get updates until they ask something of the
    Primary Server. 

    This is by design.  Changes to the namespace are not broadcast; at a large
    site like Symbolics or MIT, the constant barrage of changes would swamp the
    network.  To keep network traffic to a minimum, the namespace server only
    sends information in response to a query by another machine.  :Reset Network
    forces a namespace update by calling NETI:INITIALIZE-NAMESPACES-AND-NETWORK,
    which asks the server for a quick update.  This function is supposed to be
    called at cold and warm boot as well.

What about adding an entry to a feature request list at Symbolics?  The
desired feature is the capability of allowing users to turn on namespace
auto-updating (at small sites,naturally).  Any chance that this
would be doable?