Re: RFC: Revised authentication protocol

[Brent W. Baccala]

On Mon, Sep 19, 2016 at 9:52 AM, Olaf Buddenhagen <olafbuddenhagen@gmx.net> wrote:

I'm a bit confused here: my understanding was that you essentially
wanted to implement a "single system instance" cluster. I would have
thought that would imply only a single instance of most servers --
including auth -- rather than separate ones for each node?...

Well, I'm starting with a network transport for Mach messages that should be usable for remote filesystem and remote process execution.  I've thought a little bit about how to reconfigure the boot process to use centralized auth and proc servers, but only a little bit.  Right now, I'm trying to achieve one of the goals on the translator wish list: "network file system by just forwarding RPCs"

Also, as Richard noted, it might be best to use distributed processes.  A cluster filesystem, for example, might be implemented a bit like unionfs, with the local filesystems on each node underlying a global filesystem.  The global filesystem could be implemented by a group of processes, one per node.  A process's file objects would generally be handled by the global filesystem's local process, which would use the underlying local filesystem for replicated files, cached files, locally created files, etc., and only hand off to remote nodes for files unavailable on the local filesystem.

I see your point, though.  It would be ironic to modify the auth protocol only to end up with a cluster using a single auth server.

    agape

    brent