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Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!news.kei.com!eff!news.umbc.edu!haven.umd.edu!darwin.sura.net!spool.mu.edu!agate!darkstar.UCSC.EDU!osr From: bos@scrg.cs.tcd.ie (Bryan O'Sullivan) Newsgroups: comp.os.research,comp.answers,news.answers Subject: Comp.os.research: Frequently answered questions [2/2] Followup-To: poster Date: 1 Dec 1993 09:58:53 GMT Organization: SCRG, Department of Computer Science, Trinity College Dublin Lines: 772 Approved: comp-os-research@cse.ucsc.edu, news-answers-request@mit.edu Message-ID: <2dhpst$hfd@darkstar.UCSC.EDU> Reply-To: os-faq@cse.ucsc.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: ftp.cse.ucsc.edu Summary: frequent topics of discussion on the operating systems research group Originator: osr@ftp Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu comp.os.research:3344 comp.answers:2863 news.answers:15263 Archive-name: os-research/part2 Version: $Revision: 1.2 $ Last-Modified: $Date: 1993/11/28 17:57:40 $ Answers to frequently asked questions for comp.os.research: part 2 of 2 Bryan O'Sullivan Please note that this article is still very much in beta at the moment; I make no particular claims as to the accuracy of the material below, as some of the information is quite old. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Available software 1.1. Where can I find Unix process checkpointing and restoration packages? 1.2. What threads packages are available for me to use? 1.3. Where can I find operating systems distributions? 1.3.1. Distributed systems and microkernels 1.3.2. Unix lookalikes 1.3.3. Others 2. Performance and workload studies 2.1. TCP internetwork traffic characteristics 2.2. File system traces 2.3. Modern Unix file and block sizes 2.3.1. File sizes 2.3.2. Block sizes 2.3.3. Inode ratios 3. Papers, reports, and bibliographies 3.1. From where are papers for distributed systems available? 3.2. Where can I find other papers? 3.3. Where can I find bibliographies? 4. General Internet-accessible resources 4.1. Wide Area Information Service (WAIS) servers 4.2. Refdbms---a distributed bibliographic database system 4.3. The comp.os.research archive ------------------------------ Subject: [1] Available software From: Available software This section covers various software packages, operating systems distributions, and miscellaneous other such items which may be of interest to the operating systems research community. If you have written, or know of, some software which you believe would be of fairly wide interest, please get in touch with the FAQ maintainer with a view to having a short spiel and availability information included here. ------------------------------ Subject: [1.1] Where can I find Unix process checkpointing and restoration packages? From: Available software - [93-01-21-10-18.30] The Condor system is available via anonymous ftp from ftp.cs.wisc.edu. Condor works entirely at user level [no kernel modifications required] but doesn't currently support interprocess communication, signals, or fork(). Definitely worth a look. - Bennet S Yee implemented a `mostly portable' checkpoint and restore package back around 1987. When the programmer invokes the checkpoint procedure, it saves the state to a file; when a second process with the same program (but with different arguments) is started which calls the restore procedure, it reads the old state from the file. Available via anonymous ftp from play.trust.cs.cmu.edu:usr/bsy/pub/save_world.shar.Z. This package is known to work for Pmaxen, Sun4's, Sun3's, IBM RTs, and VAXen. Porting it to a new architecture should be relatively simple -- look at the README file. ------------------------------ Subject: [1.2] What threads packages are available for me to use? From: Available software - [93-02-01-10-15.15] For DEC customers, versions of VMS after 5.5 and Ultrix after 4.3 include bundled threads packages which implement both DEC's proprietary CMA and draft 4 of IEEE Pthreads. - SunOS 4.x provides, as standard, a lightweight process (lwp) library which isn't compatible with anything else currently available; Solaris 2.x comes with a threads library which is incompatible with lwp as well as everything else. - The POSIX / Ada-Runtime Project (PART) has made available an implementation of draft 6 of the POSIX 1003.4a Pthreads specification, which runs under SunOS 4.x; the current release is version 1.20. Available using anonymous ftp from ftp.cs.fsu.edu:pub/PART. [DCE threads? cthreads? pthreads implementations? others?] ------------------------------ Subject: [1.3] Where can I find operating systems distributions? From: Available software This section covers the availability of several well-known systems; the only criterion for inclusion of a system here is that it be of interest to some segment of the OS research community (commercial systems will be accepted for inclusion, so long as they are pertinent to research). ------------------------------ Subject: [1.3.1] Distributed systems and microkernels From: Available software - [93-03-31-22-49.53] As of July 1990 ACE is the distribution, support and sales channel for Amoeba. Due to overwhelming response from non-profit organisations wishing to obtain Amoeba for their research activities, VU is offering Amoeba 5.1 to research institutions for more or less free (via ftp at no charge, or on tape for $500 on Exabyte or $800 on QIC-24). Amoeba currently supports 68020 and 68030-based VME board machines, as well at i386- and i486-based AT PCs and Sun 3 machines. A port to the SPARC was underway as of late 1992, and may be complete by now. For further information on `commercial' Amoeba, you can contact ACE by email at <amoeba@ace.nl>, or by fax at +31 20 675 0389. Universities interested in obtaining a license should send mail to <amoeba-license@cs.vu.nl>, or fax to +31 20 642 7705. - Chorus Systemes has special programmes for universities interested in using Chorus. For more information on the offerings available, conditions, and other details, ftp to ftp.chorus.fr and get the following ASCII files: pub/README pub/academic/README pub/academic/offerings - The Cronus object-oriented distributed system may be obtained via ftp from pineapple.bbn.com; email <cronus-help@bbn.com> for details of the account name and password. Before attempting to get the Cronus distribution, you must obtain, via anonymous ftp, pineapple.bbn.com:Cronus-via-FTP-Terms. - Horus is available for research use; contact Ken Birman <ken@cs.cornell.edu> or Robbert van Renesse <rvr@cs.cornell.edu> for details. - Isis has not been publicly available since 1989, but may (I'm not sure) still be obtained using anonymous ftp from ftp.uu.net or ftp.cs.cornell.edu. After 1989, the code was picked up by Isis Distributed Systems, which has subsequently developed and supported it. The commercial version of Isis (available at very low cost to academic institutions) is available from the company. Email <info@isis.com> for information, or call +1-212-979-7729 or +1-607-272-6327. - [92-09-19-08-55.18] Plan 9 is available to academic institutions on CD-ROM; the distribution consists of around 350MB of source and binaries. For information on how to go about getting a license, contact Neera Kuckreja AT&T Bell Laboratories Room 2C-557 Murray Hill, NJ 07974 United States As of September 1992, kernels existed for the Sun SLC, Sun4Cs of various types, NeXTstations, MIPS Magnum 3000, SGI 4D series, Gateway 486, AT&T Safari, `a whole bunch of' other PCs, and the Gnot. Sydney University Basser Department of Computer Science has a port of Plan 9 underway to the DEC Alpha at the moment. A port to the Sun 3 has been completed. Contact <plan9info@cs.su.oz.au> for details. - QNX is available for academic applications through an education support programme run by QNX Software Systems, whereby QNX systems can be obtained for educational purposes at very low cost. For commercial and education availability and pricing, contact: QNX Software Systems QNX Software Systems 175 Terrence Matthews Cr. Westendstr. 19 Kanata, Ontario K2M 1W8 6000 Frankfurt am Main 1 Canada Germany 1 800 363 9001 +49 69 9754 6156 x299 +1 (613) 591 0931 +1 (613) 591 3579 (fax) +49 69 9754 6110 (fax) Versions after 4.2 of QNX run only on i386 and later processors, while version 4.1 will run on i286 and above. - [93-02-07-16-03.48] The Sprite Network Operating System is available on CD-ROM. The disc contains the source code and documentation for Sprite, a research operating system developed at the University of California, Berkeley. All the research papers from the Sprite project are also included on the disc. This software on this disc is primarily intended for research purposes, and is not really intended to be used as a production system. Boot images are provided for Sun SPARCstations and DECstations. The CD-ROM is in ISO-9660 format with Rock Ridge extensions. The disc contains about 550 megabytes of software. You can get an overview of the Sprite Project, and a complete list of what is on this disc by anonymous ftp from cdrom.com:pub/cdroms/sprite. If you would like a CD-ROM please send $25. Add $4.95 if you would like a caddy too. S&H is $5 (per order, not per disc) for US/Can/Mex, and $10 for overseas. If you live in California, please add sales tax. You can send a check or money order, or you can order with Mastercard/Visa/AmEx. Bob Bruce <rab@cdrom.com> Walnut Creek CDROM 1547 Palos Verdes Mall, Suite 260 Walnut Creek, CA 94596 United States 1 800 786-9907 (USA only) +1 510 947-5996 +1 510 947-1644 (fax) - VSTa is a small system written by Andrew Valencia <vandys@cisco.com> which uses ideas from several research operating systems in its implementation. It currently runs on ISA PCs, and is not yet ready for distribution, but you may contact the author if you are interested in doing some work on the current alpha version. [Mach, Chorus, Clouds?, Choices?] ------------------------------ Subject: [1.3.2] Unix lookalikes From: Available software - Linux is available via anonymous ftp from tsx-11.mit.edu:pub/linux or sunsite.unc.edu:pub/Linux. It is a freely-distributable System V compatible Unix, and is covered by the GNU General Public License. Linux runs on ISA bus PCs with i386 or better CPUs and at least 4 megabytes to run. - 386BSD is available via ftp from agate.berkeley.edu:pub/386BSD or ftp.uu.net:systems/unix/386BSD. It lies mid-way between 4.3BSD Reno and 4.4BSD internally, and contains no AT&T-copyrighted code. 386BSD runs on ISA bus PCs with i386 or better CPUs. - NetBSD is available via ftp from agate.berkeley.edu:pub/NetBSD. - FreeBSD is available via ftp from ftp.cosy.sbg.ac.at:pub/mirror/FreeBSD and pdq.coe.montana.edu:pub/mirrors/unix/freebsd. - The Hurd is the GNU operating system, being written by Mike Bushnell. It is based on Mach 3.0, and should be generally available some time in 1994. The Hurd should be available on most systems to which Mach has been ported. ------------------------------ Subject: [1.3.3] Others From: Available software [93-03-18-10-19.02] Microsoft is making sources of Windows NT available under license to universities and research laboratories. You should have the appropriate officials contact Mark Lewin <marklew@microsoft.com> to get started on this process. ------------------------------ Subject: [2] Performance and workload studies From: Performance and workload studies This section covers various different publicly-available traces and studies, libraries and source distributions, which may be of use. ------------------------------ Subject: [2.1] TCP internetwork traffic characteristics From: Performance and workload studies - [92-10-20-15-04.39] Peter Danzig and Sugih Jamin of USC have made available a report and a source library which simulates realistic day-to-day network traffic between nodes. The library, tcplib, `is motivated by our observation that present-day wide-area tcp/ip traffic cannot be accurately modeled with simple analytical expressions, but instead requires a combination of detailed knowledge of the end-user applications responsible for the traffic and certain measured probability distributions'. The technical report and the source library it describes are available via anonymous ftp from jerico.usc.edu:~ftp/pub/jamin/tcplib. All you need to transfer to use the library are: README, brkdn_dist.h, tcpapps.h, tcplib.1, and one of libtcp* that matches your setup. You need tcplib.tar.Z only if you must generate the library yourself. The file tcplibtr.ps.Z is the PostScript version of the report. The authors may be contacted at traffic@excalibur.usc.edu. - [93-08-09-15-15.54] Vern Paxson of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories has a report available via anonymous ftp which describes analytic models for wide-area TCP connections based upon a set of wide-area traffic traces. The report may be obtained from ftp.ee.lbl.gov:WAN-TCP-models.{1,2}.ps.Z. - [93-05-13-10-54.09] Vern Paxson also has made available another report, ftp.ee.lbl.gov:WAN-TCP-growth-trends.ps.Z, which provides an analysis of the growth trends of a medium-sized research laboratory's wide-area TCP connections over a period of more than two years. ------------------------------ Subject: [2.2] File system traces From: Performance and workload studies - Chris Ruemmler has done a study on low-level disk access patterns for a workstation, a server, and a time-shared system which appeared in the Winter 1993 USENIX proceedings. A copy may be obtained via anonymous ftp ftom ftp.hpl.hp.com:wilkes/HPL-92-152.ps.Z. - Stephen Russell <smr@cs.unsw.oz.au> has instrumented the SunOS 4.1.x kernel running on Sun 3 machines. The system allows time-stamped event records to be obtained from various points in the kernel. Events can be categorised (eg, paging, file system, etc), and are read via pseudo-devices. Ioctl calls allow substreams to be enabled/disabled, buffer status checked, etc. An external high resolution timer is used for timestamping. - [93-05-09-09-23.32] The traces used in `Measurements of a distributed file system' (SOSP 1991) may be obtained via anonymous ftp from sprite.berkeley.edu:pub/sosp-traces. An accompanying PostScript file, written by John H. Hartman <jhh@sprite.berkeley.edu>, which describes the trace file format, how to interpret the trace records, and other information may be found in the above directory as sospTraces.ps.Z. - [93-06-18-13-02.48] Hidehiro Ishii <ishii@tsl.cl.nec.co.jp> has written a system which traces the NFS accesses seen by an NFS server and calculates statistics based on such traces. Contact the author for details. ------------------------------ Subject: [2.3] Modern Unix file and block sizes From: Performance and workload studies The following sections are lifted more or less verbatim from a number of traces which were co-ordinated and analysed by Gordon Irlam <gordoni@netcom.com>. The numbers quoted below are based on Unix file size data for 12 million files, residing on 1000 file systems, with a total size of 250 gigabytes. ------------------------------ Subject: [2.3.1] File sizes From: Performance and workload studies There is no such thing as an average file system. Some file systems have lots of little files. Others have a few big files. However as a mental model the notion of an average file system is invaluable. The following table gives a break down of file sizes and the amount of space they consume. file size #files %files %files disk space %space %space (max. bytes) cumm. (Mb) cumm. 0 147479 1.2 1.2 0.0 0.0 0.0 1 3288 0.0 1.2 0.0 0.0 0.0 2 5740 0.0 1.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 4 10234 0.1 1.4 0.0 0.0 0.0 8 21217 0.2 1.5 0.1 0.0 0.0 16 67144 0.6 2.1 0.9 0.0 0.0 32 231970 1.9 4.0 5.8 0.0 0.0 64 282079 2.3 6.3 14.3 0.0 0.0 128 278731 2.3 8.6 26.1 0.0 0.0 256 512897 4.2 12.9 95.1 0.0 0.1 512 1284617 10.6 23.5 566.7 0.2 0.3 1024 1808526 14.9 38.4 1442.8 0.6 0.8 2048 2397908 19.8 58.1 3554.1 1.4 2.2 4096 1717869 14.2 72.3 4966.8 1.9 4.1 8192 1144688 9.4 81.7 6646.6 2.6 6.7 16384 865126 7.1 88.9 10114.5 3.9 10.6 32768 574651 4.7 93.6 13420.4 5.2 15.8 65536 348280 2.9 96.5 16162.6 6.2 22.0 131072 194864 1.6 98.1 18079.7 7.0 29.0 262144 112967 0.9 99.0 21055.8 8.1 37.1 524288 58644 0.5 99.5 21523.9 8.3 45.4 1048576 32286 0.3 99.8 23652.5 9.1 54.5 2097152 16140 0.1 99.9 23230.4 9.0 63.5 4194304 7221 0.1 100.0 20850.3 8.0 71.5 8388608 2475 0.0 100.0 14042.0 5.4 77.0 16777216 991 0.0 100.0 11378.8 4.4 81.3 33554432 479 0.0 100.0 11456.1 4.4 85.8 67108864 258 0.0 100.0 12555.9 4.8 90.6 134217728 61 0.0 100.0 5633.3 2.2 92.8 268435456 29 0.0 100.0 5649.2 2.2 95.0 536870912 12 0.0 100.0 4419.1 1.7 96.7 1073741824 7 0.0 100.0 5004.5 1.9 98.6 2147483647 3 0.0 100.0 3620.8 1.4 100.0 A number of observations can be made: - the distribution is heavily skewed towards small files - but it has a very long tail - the average file size is 22k - pick a file at random: it is probably smaller than 2k - pick a byte at random: it is probably in a file larger than 512k - 89% of files take up 11% of the disk space - 11% of files take up 89% of the disk space Such a heavily skewed distribution of file sizes suggests that, if one were to design a file system from scratch, it might make sense to employ radically different strategies for small and large files. The seductive power of mathematics allows us treat a 200 byte and a 2MB file in the same way. But do we really want to? Are there any problems in engineering where the same techniques would be used in handling physical objects that span 6 orders of magnitude? A quote from sci.physics that has stuck with me: `When things change by 2 orders of magnitude, you are actually dealing with fundamentally different problems'. People I trust say they would have expected the tail of the above distribution to have been even longer. There are at least some files in the 1-2G range. They point out that DBMS shops with really large files might have been less inclined to respond to a survey like this than some other sites. This would bias the disk space figures, but it would have no appreciable effect on file counts. The results gathered would still be valuable because many static disk layout issues are determined by the distribution of small files and are largely independent of the potential existence of massive files. (It should be noted that many popular DBMSs, such as Oracle, Sybase, and Informix, use raw disk partitions instead of Unix file systems for storing data, hence the difficulty in gathering data about them in a uniform way.) ------------------------------ Subject: [2.3.2] Block sizes From: Performance and workload studies The last block of a file is normally only partially occupied, and so as block sizes are increased so too will the the amount of wasted disk space. The following historical values for the design of the BSD FFS are given in `Design and implementation of the 4.3BSD Unix operating system': fragment size overhead (bytes) (%) 512 4.2 1024 9.1 2048 19.7 4096 42.9 Files have clearly gotten larger since then; I obtained the following results: fragment size overhead (bytes) (%) 128 0.3 256 0.6 512 1.1 1024 2.5 2048 5.4 4096 12.3 8192 27.8 16384 61.2 By default the BSD FFS typically uses a 1k fragment size. Perhaps this size is no longer optimal and should be increased. (The FFS block size is constrained to be no more than 8 times the fragment size. Clustering is a good way to improve throughput for FFS based file systems, but it doesn't do very much to reduce the not insignificant FFS computational overhead.) It is interesting to note that even though most files are less than 2K in size, having a 2K block size wastes very little space, because disk space consumption is so totally dominated by large files. ------------------------------ Subject: [2.3.3] Inode ratios From: Performance and workload studies The BSD FFS statically allocates inodes. By default one inode is allocated for every 2K of disk space. Since an inode consumes 128 bytes this means that by default 6.25% of disk space is consumed by inodes. It is important not to run out of inodes since any remaining disk space is then effectively wasted. Despite this allocating 1 inode for every 2K is excessive. For each file system studied I worked out the minimum sized disk it could be placed on. Most disks needed to be only marginally larger than the size of their files, but a few disks, having much smaller files than average, needed a much larger disk---a small disk had insufficient inodes. bytes per overhead inode (%) 1024 12.5 2048 6.3 3072 4.5 4096 4.2 5120 4.4 6144 4.9 7168 5.5 8192 6.3 9216 7.2 10240 8.3 11264 9.5 12288 10.9 13312 12.7 14336 14.6 15360 16.7 16384 19.1 17408 21.7 18432 24.4 19456 27.4 20480 30.5 Clearly, the current default of one inode for every 2K of data is too small. Earlier results suggested that allocating one inode for every 5-6k was in some sense optimal, and allocating one inode for every 8k would only be 0.4% worse. The new data suggests one inode for every 4k is optimal, and allocating one inode for every 8k would be 2.1% worse. The analysis technique I used is very sensitive to even a few file systems with very small files. The main source of file systems with lots of small files would appear to be netnews servers. The typical Usenet message would appear to be 1-2k in length. Ignoring such file systems would drastically alter the conclusions I reach. If, as I believe might already be the case, news servers are manually tuned to have a lower than normal bytes per inode ratio, it would then be possible to justify setting the default ratio much higher. Clearly it is best if the file system dynamically allocate inodes; I believe AIX does this for instance. Systems that statically allocate inodes should probably increase the bytes per inode ratio, but it is not clear to exactly what value. The engineer in me says "it is important to play this one conservatively: stick to 6k", the artist goes "as Chris Torek says: aesthetics, 8k". ------------------------------ Subject: [3] Papers, reports, and bibliographies From: Papers, reports, and bibliographies Network-available documents are listed in this section. I'd like to see information for obtaining such things as the Spring papers and other sets of reports which aren't electronically-available included here as well, at some stage. ------------------------------ Subject: [3.1] From where are papers for distributed systems available? From: Papers, reports, and bibliographies Amoeba ftp.cs.vu.nl:amoeba ftp.cse.ucsc.edu:pub/amoeba Arjuna arjuna.ncl.ac.uk:pub/Arjuna Choices choices.cs.uiuc.edu:Papers Chorus ftp.chorus.fr:pub/chorus-reports cse.ogi.edu:pub/chorus/reports Clouds helios.cc.gatech.edu:pub/papers Cronus pineapple.bbn.com:doc Guide imag.fr:pub/GUIDE/doc Horus ftp.cs.cornell.edu:pub/Horus Isis ftp.cse.ucsc.edu:pub/bib/isis.bib ftp.cs.cornell.edu:pub Plan 9 research.att.com:dist/plan9doc research.att.com:dist/plan9man X kernel cs.arizona.edu:pub/xkernel Papers covering Amoeba, Choices, Chorus, Clouds, the Hurd, Guide, Mach, Mars, NonStop, and Plan 9 are also available via anonymous ftp from nic.funet.fi:pub/doc/OS. [I'd like to find the authoritative homes for V and Mach---Mars and NonStop are a bit more obscure, I think; they certainly aren't asked after much] ------------------------------ Subject: [3.2] Where can I find other papers? From: Papers, reports, and bibliographies QNX [93-09-19-22-22.26] ftp.cse.ucsc.edu:pub/qnx Solaris 2.x [93-02-23-12-12.43] opcom.sun.ca:pub/docs/papers opcom.sun.ca:pub/docs/solaris Windows NT [92-09-18-11-46.16] ftp.uu.net:vendor/microsoft/win32-api ftp.uu.net:vendor/microsoft/isv-communications ------------------------------ Subject: [3.3] Where can I find bibliographies? From: Papers, reports, and bibliographies Load balancing ftp.cse.ucsc.edu:pub/bib/load-balancing.bib Object-oriented operating systems ftp.cse.ucsc.edu:pub/bib/ooos.bib.Z ftp.inria.fr:INRIA/bib/ooos.bib.Z Parallel and distributed I/O ftp.cse.ucsc.edu:pub/bib/io.bib Sprite network operating system sprite.berkeley.edu:pub/sprite See also the section on General Net Resources. [There's quite a lot more at ftp.cse.ucsc.edu, if anyone wants to add more to this list] ------------------------------ Subject: [4] General Internet-accessible resources From: General Internet-accessible resources This section contains information about a variety of services available to the OS research community via the Internet. ------------------------------ Subject: [4.1] Wide Area Information Service (WAIS) servers From: General Internet-accessible resources [92-09-21-16-38.23] Loughborough University high-performance networking and distributed systems archive may be accessed via World Wide Web at http://genie.lut.ac.uk. This archive contains, according to Jon Knight <J.P.Knight@lut.ac.uk>, the organiser: - Technical reports and papers written at LUT by the networks and distributed systems researchers in the Department of Computer Studies. - Technical reports, papers and theses which have been produced at other sites and then made available for public electronic access. - Software which is of use in research or which has been produced by a specific research project. - Details of relevant conferences, collected from a variety of sources (USENET, email, flyers, etc). - Information on ongoing research projects. - Bibliographies that have been generated for research at LUT and also access to other WAIS indexed bibliographies, both at LUT and elsewhere. - A list of contacts in the field, with details of their research interests. This is entirely voluntary (i.e. people have agreed to Jon entering their details rather than him just rooting round the Internet to build up the information). [93-02-18-21-18.31] Postings to comp.os.research since 1988 may be found via WAIS at UCSC's Computer Science gopher hole: (:source :version 3 :ip-address "128.114.134.19" :ip-name "ftp.cse.ucsc.edu" :tcp-port 210 :database-name "comp-os-research" :cost 0.00 :cost-unit :free :maintainer "paul@cse.ucsc.edu" :description "Server created with WAIS release 8 b5 on Jul 9 03:51:11 1992 by paul@cse.ucsc.edu The files of type netnews used in the index were: /home/ftp/pub/comp.os.research" ) Bibliographies in the comp.os.research collection are accessible via WAIS from UCSC: (:source :version 3 :ip-address "128.114.134.19" :ip-name "ftp.cse.ucsc.edu" :tcp-port 210 :database-name "os-bibliographies" :cost 0.00 :cost-unit :free :maintainer "paul@cse.ucsc.edu" :description "Server created with WAIS release 8 b5 on Jul 9 22:38:27 1992 by paul@cse.ucsc.edu The files of type bibtex used in the index were: /home/ftp/pub/bib" ) ------------------------------ Subject: [4.2] Refdbms---a distributed bibliographic database system From: General Internet-accessible resources [92-10-01-11-39.32] The alpha release of refdbms version 3, developed by John Wilkes of the Concurrent Systems Project at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories and Richard Golding of the Concurrent Systems Laboratory at UC Santa Cruz, is now available. It can be obtained by anonymous ftp from ftp.cse.ucsc.edu:pub/refdbms. The system has been tested on Sun 3 and 4 systems running SunOS 4.1.x, and on DECstations running Ultrix 4.1. It is an experiment in building weak-consistency wide-area distributed applications, and the databases currently available for the system have a good systems coverage. The system includes tools to query the database, to produce bibliographies for LaTeX documents, and to enter new references into the database. It is part of ongoing research into wide-area distributed information systems on the Internet. Features include: - Distributed databases: a reference database can be shared among multiple sites. Updates can be entered at any site, and will be propagated to the other sites holding a replica of the database. - Multiple databases: every database has a name, and users specify the order in which databases will be searched. - Private databases: databases can be private, available site-wide, or they can be made available to other sites. - Database query by keyword, author, and title word. - Translator for refer-format databases. - Usable with LaTeX documents: the internal refdbms format can be translated into a special BibTeX format. An up-to-date list of bibliographies exported by various institutions may be obtained using anonymous ftp from ftp.cse.ucsc.edu:pub/refdbms/current-databases. ------------------------------ Subject: [4.3] The comp.os.research archive From: General Internet-accessible resources An archive of all messages posted to comp.os.research since 1988 is maintained at UC Santa Cruz. It may be accessed via anonymous ftp at ftp.cse.ucsc.edu:pub/comp.os.research.