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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!eff!enterpoop.mit.edu!eru.mt.luth.se!lunic!sunic!aun.uninett.no!flipper.pvv.unit.no!imf.unit.no!arnej From: arnej@imf.unit.no (Arne Henrik Juul) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development Subject: Re: A challenge to all true hackers: objects and types Message-ID: <ARNEJ.93Mar24113744@chanur.imf.unit.no> Date: 24 Mar 93 10:37:44 GMT References: <JKH.93Mar9214944@whisker.lotus.ie> <C3ow4H.FID@BitBlocks.com> <JKH.93Mar15175727@whisker.lotus.ie> <1993Mar20.145007.1@vxcrna.cern.ch> <JKH.93Mar20153113@whisker.lotus.ie> Organization: Norwegian Institute of Technology Lines: 37 NNTP-Posting-Host: chanur.imf.unit.no In-reply-to: jkh@whisker.lotus.ie's message of Sat, 20 Mar 1993 15:31:13 GMT > In article <JKH.93Mar20153113@whisker.lotus.ie> jkh@whisker.lotus.ie (Jordan K. Hubbard) writes: > I agree that what apollo did with the object store was truly a better > way. Has anyone talked to Bill about this? I'm not sure whether or > not he's ever used an apollo. The time to speak up is now. > > ftp://ftp.sage.usenix.org/pub/usenix/summer86/extensible-io.ps.Z > ftp://archive.umich.edu/apollo/ost.ps.Z > > Thanks for the pointer. I'm off to read it! > Jordan I'm using apollo Domain/OS SR10.4 (newest version) every day. And I don't agree AT ALL. Apollo's filesystems break too many programs, including the bundled C compiler. (You can't compile any file that is open for writing by any process). The networking bit isn't good either - there are great problems when files are written to, directories always have a link count of 2, and the security issues makes NFS look wonderful. I also think that variant links using environment variables is a BAD idea. Do you realize this means that EVERY BLOODY program that sets environment variables must be very cautious about how it is done, and which environment variables it uses? It doesn't make it any better that the variant links are used to make a split-universe OS. Granted, lots of the problems with the apollos aren't related to the filesystem, but a lot of them are. The apollo filesystem also has an abysmally low performance. A sun-3 (68020) using NFS disks is MUCH FASTER in interactive use (editing, compiling, shell scripts) than an apollo (68040) with local disk. To make a good operating system, DON'T imitate apollo. 386bsd lover and apollo hater, Arne H. Juul -- arnej@lise.unit.no -- University of Trondheim, Norway