This document describes the file system semantics of PVFS2, both in terms of how it behaves and in terms of how this behavior is implemented. Rationale for decisions is included in order to motivate decisions.
We start by discussing the semantics of server operations. We follow this with a discussion of one client side implementation and its semantics.
The discussion is broken into use cases. First we will cover the issue. Second we will discuss the semantics (to be) implemented in PVFS2. Finally we will discuss the implications of these semantics on the file system design and implementation.
In some cases we will provide alternatives for semantics and/or the implementation.