WFS a simple shared file system for a distributed environment

ABSTRACT

WFS is a shared file server available to a large network community. WFS responds to a carefully limited repertoire of commands that client programs transmit over the network. The system does not utilize connections, but instead behaves like a remote disk and reacts to page-level requests. The design emphasizes reliance upon client programs to implement the traditional facilities (stream IO, a directory system, etc.) of a file system. The use of atomic commands and connectionless protocols nearly eliminates the need for WFS to maintain transitory state information from request to request. Various uses of the system are discussed and extensions are proposed to provide security and protection without violating the design principles.

REFERENCES

• 1: A. Birrell and R. Needham, A Universal File Server, to appear in Communications of the ACM.
• 2: D. Boggs, J. Shoch, E. Taft, and R. Metcalfe, Pup: An Internetwork Architecture, to appear in IEEE Transactions on Communication.
• 3: D. D. Clark, AN INPUT/OUTPUT ARCHITECTURE FOR VIRTUAL MEMORY COMPUTER SYSTEMS, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 1974
• 4: J. Israel, J. Mitchell, and H. Sturgis, Separating Data from Function in a Distributed File System, Proc. Second International Symposium on Operating Systems, IRIA, Rocquencourt, France, October 1978; to appear in D. Lanciaux, cd., Operating Systems, North Holland.
• 5: S. Kent, ENCRYPTION-BASED PROTECTION PROTOCOLS FOR INTERACTIVE USER-COMPUTER COMMUNICATION, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 1976
• 6: B. Lampson and H. Sturgis, Crash Recovery in a Distributed Data Storage System, to appear in Communications of the ACM.
• 7: Edward M. McCreight, Pagination of B*-trees with variable-length records, Communications of the ACM, v.20 n.9, p.670-674, Sept. 1977 [doi>10.1145/359810.359839]
• 8: Gene Mcdaniel, Metric (Extended Abstract): A kernel instrumentation system for distributed environments, ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review, v.11 n.5, p.93-99, November 1977
• 9: Robert M. Metcalfe , David R. Boggs, Ethernet: distributed packet switching for local computer networks, Communications of the ACM, v.19 n.7, p.395-404, July 1976 [doi>10.1145/360248.360253]
• 10: Roger M. Needham, Adding capability access to conventional file servers, ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review, v.13 n.1, p.3-4, January 1979 [doi>10.1145/850652.850653]
• 11: R. M. Needham , A. D. Birrell, The CAP filing system, Proceedings of the sixth ACM symposium on Operating systems principles, p.11-16, November 16-18, 1977, West Lafayette, Indiana, United States
• 12: Roger M. Needham , Michael D. Schroeder, Using encryption for authentication in large networks of computers, Communications of the ACM, v.21 n.12, p.993-999, Dec. 1978 [doi>10.1145/359657.359659]
• 13: William H. Paxton, A client-based transaction system to maintain data integrity, Proceedings of the seventh ACM symposium on Operating systems principles, p.18-23, December 10-12, 1979, Pacific Grove, California, United States [doi>10.1145/800215.806565]
• 14: M. Richards, BCPL: A Tool for Compiler Writing and System Programming, AFIPS Conference Proceedings (SJCC) 35:557-566, 1969.
• 15: R. L. Rivest , A. Shamir , L. Adleman, A method for obtaining digital signatures and public-key cryptosystems, Communications of the ACM, v.21 n.2, p.120-126, Feb. 1978 [doi>10.1145/359340.359342]
• 16: J. Shoch and S. Weyer, Page Level Access to a Network File Server from Smalltalk, to appear.
• 17: C. Thacker, E. McCreight, B. Lampson, R. Sproull, and D. Boggs, Alto: A Personal Computer, Computer Structures: Readings and Examples (Siewiorek, Bell, and Newell, eds.), 1979, to appear.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.4 OPERATING SYSTEMS
      D.4.3 File Systems Management

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.4 OPERATING SYSTEMS
      D.4.7 Organization and Design
          Subjects: Distributed systems
      D.4.8 Performance

General Terms:
Management, Performance