Re: [9fans] Plan9 - the next 20 years

On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 9:50 AM, erik quanstrom <quanstro@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
* you can get the same effect by increasing the scale of your system.

* the reason conventional systems work is not, in my opinion, because
the collision window is small, but because one typically doesn't do
conflicting edits to the same file.

* saying that something "isn't likely" in an unquantifiable way is
not a recipie for success in computer science, in my experience.

- erik


I don't see how any of that relates to having to do more work to
ensure that C/R and process migration across nodes works and keeps
things as consistent as possible.

that's a fine and sensible goal.  but for the reasons above, i don't buy this
line of reasoning.

in a plan 9 system, the only files that i can think of which many processes
have open at the same time are log files, append-only files.  just reopening
log file would solve the problem.

what is a specific case of contention you are thinking of?

i'm not sure why editor is the case that's being bandied about.  two users
don't usually edit the same file at the same time.  that case already
does not work.  and i'm not sure why one would snapshot an editing
session edit the file by other means and expect things to just work out.
(and finally, acme, for example, does not keep the original file open.
if open files are what get snapshotted, there would be not difference.)

- erik



Ron mentioned a bunch before, like /etc/hosts or a pipe to another
process, and I would also suggest that things in /net and databases
could be a serious problem. If you migrate a process, how do you
ensure that the process is in a sane state on the new node?

I agree that generally only one process will be accessing a "normal"
file at once. I think an editor is not a good example, as you say.

.

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