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- From: ken@CS.Cornell.EDU (Ken Birman)
- Newsgroups: comp.archives
- Subject: [comp.sys.isis] Re: Learning about ISIS
- Message-ID: <1991Oct12.105528.9198@agate.berkeley.edu>
- Date: 12 Oct 91 10:55:28 GMT
- References: <3017@gemini.cs.nps.navy.mil> <1991Oct10.000831.5310@cs.cornell.edu>
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- Followup-To: comp.sys.isis
- Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY 14853
- Lines: 73
- Approved: adam@soda.berkeley.edu
- X-Original-Date: 10 Oct 91 00: 08:31 GMT
- X-Original-Newsgroups: comp.sys.isis
-
- Archive-name: auto/comp.sys.isis/Learning-about-ISIS
-
- In article <3017@gemini.cs.nps.navy.mil> raghuram@taurus.cs.nps.navy.mil writes:
- >I am beginning a study of ISIS. Aside from the article in August 91
- >issue of IEEE Computer and the references at the back, would there
- >be other articles, documents that will ease the learning process.?
- >
- >Also, how could I obtain a copy of the User's guide and reference
- >manual? What are the requirements for obtaining ISIS environment?
-
- There is an extensive list of references; at last count, perhaps 40
- papers and technical reports that "relate" to the project. All of these
- are available from my secretary (who can also email the most recent
- list): reen@cs.cornell.edu
-
- Most of our recent papers are also available in postscript form and can
- be copied to your system and printed on your favorite laser printer.
- The files to copy are on a machine named ftp.cs.cornell.edu:
- ftp ftp.cs.cornell.edu
- Name: anonymous
- Password: my-user-name@my-home-machine
- > ls pub/TR*
- (long list)
- > binary
- > mget pub/TR*Z
- > quit
- You can also get at this stuff through Prospero (the Univ. of Washington
- national file system) and, I think, through AFS.
-
- Of the recent papers, the one that would be best to read first is
- called "The process group approach to reliable distributed computing"
- and is in the file pub/TR91-1216.ps.Z -- the other papers are more
- technical and may be too detailed for just learning about the system.
- Another reasonable place to look would be in the textbook from the
- Arctic 88 short course in distributed systems. This book was edited
- by Sape Mullender and appeared in the ACM Press series from Addison
- Wesley in 1990; the title was shortened to "Distributed Systems". There
- are two chapters concerned with systems like ISIS.
-
- The IEEE Computer paper, of course, was about Meta, and papers on that
- system are also available. Moreover, Mark Wood's thesis will soon be
- available (meaning by the end of this year).
-
- To obtain a free copy of ISIS, you copy ISISV21.TAR.Z and ISISV21-DOC.TAR.Z
- from the same place, edit protos/pr_client.c and fix the chmod(...., 666);
- to use mode 0666, and then start playing with it. This version of ISIS is
- more than one year old and known to have some bugs, but is really quite
- robust for most purposes and is used by a large number of research groups
- and even commercial prototyping efforts. --> No support is available <--
-
- The V2.1 ISIS release also contained an old but useable version of
- Meta. Like ISIS V2.1, this version of Meta is --> not supported <--
-
- To obtain the commercially extended version of ISIS, which is faster and
- has a lot of new software, email to sla@isis.com for information. I
- see that you are with the Navy: we can provide contacts at NSWC if you
- like. The commercial version of ISIS, by the way, can be used from Ada.
- And, of course, it is supported. A fancy version of Meta will soon be
- available for V3.0
-
- The commercial version of the manual can be purchased seperately from the
- ISIS V3.0.3 commercial release, at $30/copy. A lot of work has gone into
- the manual since V2.1 was released, and I recommend that you obtain a
- copy of the V3.0.3 manual even if you plan to play with the V2.1 freebee
- at first. However, I should also say that it is impossible to evaluate
- the commercial product using the older, free system. If you need an
- evaluation version of the commercial product and are not already a
- user of V2.1, the company will generally accomodate requests. Again,
- contact sla@isis.com for details.
- --
- Kenneth P. Birman E-mail: ken@cs.cornell.edu
- 4105 Upson Hall, Dept. of Computer Science TEL: 607 255-9199 (office)
- Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 (USA) FAX: 607 255-4428
-