Re: Distributed VSTa

[Eric_Jacobs@fc.mcps.k12.md.us (Eric Jacobs) writes:]

>Perhaps it would be appropriate to break out another abstraction layer
>and use something like:
> mount fs/root:tmp@//net/tcpip/205.187.71.66 /dist
>Then those of us without ethernet can still play with it by doing
> mount fs/root:tmp@//tty/rs232 /dist

Really, you should still use KA9Q, and SLIP over the serial line. The
problem with raw access like this is that you manually have to ensure that
nobody multiplexes. In a fork/exec environment this may end up being harder
than you think.

>In fact, it would be possible to run it off of a local pipe in this
>manner, for testing and debugging.

You can already do this. KA9Q is happy to have an IP address without any
network interfaces, and then you can open TCP/IP connections to your local
servers. I do this to test networking all the time.

>I'm still confused about how the ka9q suite works. I didn't have an
>ethernet
>card to play with, but when I launched it I got a command-line
>interface.
>Is there a separate set of TCP/IP servers, or how does it work?

TCP/IP is not related to any particular network interface. You can have a
TCP/IP stack with a local IP address, and no networking interfaces.

>Hey, you could mount a virtual console on the other machine, and then
>run a local login on that console! I'll bet that would really confuse
>the other user.

Yes, that should work. You'd have to make sure there wasn't already a local
login trying to serve that console screen, but otherwise this should be
fine.

>Or how about mounting their pipes and putting funny messages as
>they page through with less.

I think this would usually end up just acting like a slow pipe()
implementation. Except that you could kill off your local pipe server and
pipes would still work. More interesting would be to mount a single /env
from multiple PC's; then all the systems would exist in a common
hierarchical environment namespace.

                                                        Andy
Received on Mon Nov 30 06:43:15 1998