Standards Update, IEEE 1003.4: Real-time Extensions

[Dan Bernstein]

Submitted-by: brnstnd at kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)

In article <551 at usenix.ORG> chip at tct.uucp (Chip Salzenberg) writes:
> According to brnstnd at kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein):
> >NFS (as it is currently implemented) shows what goes wrong when
> >reliability disappears.
> In a discussion of filesystem semantics, NFS is a straw man.  Everyone
> knows it's a botch.
> If AFS and RFS don't convince one that a networked filesystem
> namespace can work well, then nothing will.

Exactly! This example proves my point. What's so bad about NFS---why it
doesn't fit well into the filesystem---is that it doesn't make the
remote filesystem reliable and local. If you show me Joe Shmoe's RFS
with reliable, local, static I/O objects, I'll gladly include it in the
filesystem.

---Dan

Volume-Number: Volume 21, Number 185