Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: ACCESS TO SHARED TAPEDRIVES Message-ID: <6740@brl-smoke.ARPA> Date: Wed, 25-Nov-87 21:43:29 EST Article-I.D.: brl-smok.6740 Posted: Wed Nov 25 21:43:29 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 29-Nov-87 11:49:26 EST References: <10542@brl-adm.ARPA> <271@cunixc.columbia.edu> Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB)) Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD. Lines: 14 In article <271@cunixc.columbia.edu> howie@cunixc.columbia.edu (Howie Kaye) writes: >What happens if the user never does release the drive, but logs out? Long ago, I designed a public resource allocator that dealt with these issues. (However, I never implemented it.) The solution to the above question was that an attempt to allocate that was not able to be satisfied using known free resources would then inspect the supposedly allocated ones to see if the user was still active (logged in; this is extendable to looking for processes running on his behalf if the device was allocatable by daemons). This fit in nicely with my design goal of not requiring any modifications to existing system software (e.g. init). UNIX has long needed a standardized facility like this, and it ought to be much more general than merely an interface to magtape drives.