make DOS a filesystem?

[Jason Zions]

Submitted-by: jason at cnd.hp.com (Jason Zions)

In Article <562 at usenix.org> Submitted-by: guy at auspex.uucp (Guy Harris)
>...I'm not sure what all this has to do with UNIX standards.

In Article <106914 at uunet.UU.NET> Submitted-by: seanf at sco.COM (Sean Fagan)
>... What this has to do with standard unix is beyond me, however.

In Article <106918 at uunet.UU.NET> Submitted-by: jsq at uunet.uu.net
>I have to admit I agree: I don't know what this has to do with
>comp.std.unix, either.  Suggest we retire this topic.

Actually, it *does* have something to do with standards. Just such a
concept, i.e. how to cope with filesystems offering less than full 1003.1
semantics, is a major topic of discussion in 1003.8 (POSIX Transparent File
Access).

The whole thing started when we decided to divide our scope into two parts:

1) Full TFA, which consists of additional description and the odd interface
or two, for networked filesystems that supported full 1003.1 semantics, and

2) Subset TFA, for networked filesystems that provided less than 1003.1
(e.g. NFS, RFS, etc.) Supporting subset TFA meant providing some mechanism
for an application to inquire as to precisely which semantics were
available and which were not, and that the subset we should permit could be
quite small (i.e. core usage of FTAM).

Around the time of the Snowbird meeting, we came to the not-so-startling
realization that one need not require the subset-semantics filesystem to be
at the other end of a network. One could have a local FTAM filestore, for
example. Then, we realized that the core subset we'd extracted from FTAM
was no richer than the subset of 1003.1 semantics natively supported by the
current CD-ROM filesystem standard; since CD-ROMs are becoming increasingly
popular devices, perhaps it made sense for 1003.8 Subset TFA to talk about
those devices as well.

>From the CD-ROM it was a short step to the idea of a local DOS filesystem
on a floppy or somesuch, or perhaps accessed over some PC LAN protocol like
Netware or LM/X.

In other words, the whole thing isn't as far-fetched as it might seem, and
it most certainly is standards-relevant.

Jason Zions
Chairman of, but not speaking for, IEEE P1003.8 POSIX Transparent File Access

[ Ok, it's hard to argue with that line of thought regarding relevance.
Do let's keep it technical, non-personal, and non-repetitious, however.
Maybe you could say more about what 1003.8 is planning to do, in more detail?
-mod ]

Volume-Number: Volume 21, Number 157