Subject: Clustering filesystem ideas?
To: None <netbsd-help@netbsd.org>
From: Jon Lindgren <jlindgren@slk.com>
List: netbsd-help
Date: 12/28/2000 13:51:26
I've been itching for a while for the ability to run a cluster of machines
which share a common physical disk.

I've been thinking of starting to learn the filesystems code, and perhaps
implement a simple [heh!] proof-of-concept type of f/s sharing, perhaps
using a userland daemon to maintain locking, etc...  I'm not looking for
tremeoundous performance or stability at this point; just a kind of "look,
it works okay, neat-o" type of implementation.

Of course, this is gonna use a SCSI bus, probably maintaining locks over a
network connection (seeing as the SCSI subsystem doesn't support talking
adapter to adapter at this point).  I'd probably just hack up a version of
ffs to use as the filesystem.  Again, I'm not looking for a fantastically
superb implementation - just a "that was fun, look mom, two machines - one
disk".

Is anybody already working on such a project?  Does anyone have any great
ideas or pointers?  At the very least, I'd want to take the ffs code and
copy it to a new f/s name (probably "hackfs" or such).  I'd also love any
ideas on how to talk from the kernel to a userland daemon (never had to do
such a thing).

Ideas? Criticisms? "Woohoos?" "Booooos?"

-Jon
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