[unios] Networked user (was: Networked GUI)

[Anders Petersson]

From: Anders Petersson <anders.petersson@mbox320.swipnet.se>

At 12:29 1998-12-17 -0500, you wrote:
>From: Pat Wendorf <beholder@ican.net>

>> >This is something to think of. I'm not too sure of how it works in
>> reality, but I
>> >do know AS/400's can do it.  I think this should be considered, and I do
>> believe
>> >it can be just another addition to the system abstract... just like
>> distributed
>> >processing...
>>
>> Maybe the two features even can be seen as different sides of the same
>> coin. In the former case it's data that's global, in the latter it's
>> processes.
>> What about some kind of 'network' user account (can be nested)...
>> Everything put there is distributed.
>
>Hmm sounds good, expand on the idea for clarity.

Something that I start to see more and more as essential is the ability of
nested users (a user can host other users under his home dir).
A special "user" home dir could be implemented, the networked user. This
user would be distributed in the whole network. How is only needed to be
known by the code that implements it... invisible for "outsiders", that is.
So, under this net user the tree would look as it would anywhere else, but
the implementation would be different. Users that are created here are
known anywhere on the network (network-wide home dir). The same holds for
everything else that can be stored in the tree... the whole sub-part of the
systree is distributed.
If you wanted to be able to log onto your own machine from everywhere in
the network, you could place a symbolic link to your user mounting point.
When you log in, the link is found and followed, and you are transported
outside the net user, to your own account. On your physical computer.

Problem: This user would not be a child of any FS, but the data needs to be
stored no matter what. It need not be visible *where* the data is stored
(it logically exist on the very network), so much freedom is given to the
implementation to store the data on any node, and duplicated too. But in
the end someone has to give it some real storage space.
What if you just give the net user access to (limited) space in another
part of the systree? That part would be on reliabable storage which the net
user could use.

This is not something that we *need* to think about. The flexibility of
UniOS would allow anybody to do it later... but of course it's fun to do
anyway. :)

binEng


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