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A Comparison of Two Network-Based File Servers
A Comparison of Two Network-Based File ServersJames G. Mitchell and Jeremy Dion, in Communications of the ACM, April 1982, Volume 25, Number 4. I previously described the Cambridge File Server (CFS). In this 1981 SOSP paper the inner details of it and the Xerox Distributed File System (XDFS) are compared. This paper provides an interesting […]
The Cambridge File Server
The Cambridge File Server Jeremy Dixon, in ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review, Volume 14, Number 4, pp 26-35, 1980, ACM. Cambridge was certainly a hotbed of systems work in the 1970s (not to say that it still is not). They were looking at very different architectures and approaches to problems than we saw from the […]
WFS: A Simple Shared File System for a Distributed Environment
WFS: A Simple Shared File System for a Distributed Environment Daniel Swinehart, Gene McDaniel, and David Boggs, in Proceedings of the Seventh ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, pp. 9-17, 1979, ACM. This file system was developed at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), which produced a string of amazing advances in the nascent computer technology […]
A Universal File Server
A Universal File Server A. D. Birrell and R. M. Needham, in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol SE-6, No. 5, September 1980, pp. 450-453. One of the challenges in this next group of papers is picking which ones to discuss. The advent of networks saw the blossoming of the idea of centralizing storage and having […]
Implementing Atomic Actions on Decentralized Data
Implementing Atomic Actions on Decentralized Data David P. Reed, Transactions on Computer Systems, Vol 1. No. 1, February 1983, pp. 3-23. This certainly must have been an interesting choice to be the first paper of the first ACM Transactions on Computer Systems. It is certainly an interesting work on concurrent activity within a distributed system. It relies upon a […]
A Client-Based Transaction System to Maintain Data Integrity
A Client-Based Transaction System to Maintain Data Integrity William H. Paxton, in Proceedings of the seventh ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, 1979, pp 18-23. Last time I discussed the basis of consistency and locks. I did so because I thought it would help explain this paper more easily. We now move into the nascent world […]
A Principle for Resilient Sharing of Distributed Resources
A Principle for Resilient Sharing of Distributed Resources Peter A. Alsberg and John D. Day, In Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Software engineering, pp. 562-570. IEEE Computer Society Press, 1976. Today I turn my attention to a paper that begins to explore the issues surrounding distributed systems. This paper sets forth some basic principles […]
Some Observations about Decentralization of File Systems
Some Observations about Decentralization of File Systems. Jerome H. Saltzer, 1971. This paper caught my eye because it leads in a different direction than the other file systems papers I’ve been looking at. Instead of talking about file systems on a single computer, it has the audacity of suggesting that maybe we want to have […]
On the history of File Systems
I have made it a goal for 2018 to answer a question several people have asked me: what papers should I read to learn more about file systems. So I’ve decided to attempt to copy a format that I’ve found useful – The Morning Paper. I admit, I am not sure I’ll be able to […]
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