Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!uwvax!oddjob!gargoyle!ihnp4!ihlpg!jchvr From: jchvr@ihlpg.ATT.COM (Hartong) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: proposal for remote fileserver to access unix files in minix Message-ID: <3421@ihlpg.ATT.COM> Date: Tue, 7-Jul-87 02:11:10 EDT Article-I.D.: ihlpg.3421 Posted: Tue Jul 7 02:11:10 1987 Date-Received: Fri, 10-Jul-87 01:07:34 EDT Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois Lines: 31 Keywords: remote file server I just finished reading the book and have been bitten by the Mninx bug. I think Andy was very good in writing this book because he has led me to think about the following (which I am sure he intended me to). Lets assume for now that via the COM1 port of our PC, the machine is hooked up to a modem and logged into a standard Unix system. Would it not be nice to have access via this small line to ALL files on the Unix system (eg. to consider Unix as a remote file server for Minx). If we could make this work then we could use the "host" as backup and as a very large (but slow) disk! How do we do this? Well for a start we must write a little program on Unix that understand the 25 or so messages that Minix can send to FS. (eg. access, mdir, chmod, ...) All this will be very simple on a Unix machine (I mean just look at it closely!!). The second step is to provide some lower level of communication between his process on Unix and the FS on Minix. (we could use some kind a simplified kermit protocol). The third step is then to hack the FS on Minix to transfer certain messages to the Unix file server process while doing others still itself. The fourth step would be to hack the mount system call to allow a user to initiate the existence of the file server on Unix. Did I arouse anyone interest enough to start a little discussion and maybe someone will start coding it? H.F. van Rietschote