DistOS 2019F 2019-10-09

Note there will be no small group discussions today (or group reports). First half of class will be a lecture on the readings, second half of class will be a review for the midterm.

Readings

Plan 9 & Inferno (no group report)

• Presotto et. al, Plan 9, A Distributed System (1991)
• Pike et al., Plan 9 from Bell Labs (1995)
• Doward et al., The Inferno Operating System (1997)
• Inferno OS website (browse)
• Rob Pike and Dennis M. Ritchie, "The Styx Architecture for Distributed Systems"

Discussion Questions

• Why did the creators of UNIX make Plan 9? What was their key inspiration?
• How does Plan 9 differ from UNIX originally? How has that line been blurred over time?
• Why was Inferno created? Was there any external simulus?
• What are the key ideas behind Styx?

Midterm Review

What were the key themes of this semester (so far)?

• network transparency via RPC, DSM
• history - how things evolved
• UNIX semantics & compatibility
• (caching)
• distributed filesystems

Why network transparency?

• user/developer experience - easier to use, understand
• ultimate form of "resource sharing"

Side note: log-structured fs in sprite