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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