Porting the Newcastle connection to 4.2 Berkeley UNIX
Jeffrey M. Donnelly · Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) · 1985
The Newcastle Connection !BrMaRa,82J is a machine independent software system that provides users and user programs with a distributed UNIX [HiTh,74J environment, called UNIX United. The Newcastle Connection enhances several standard UNIX operating systems by providing transparent access to remote files and remote processes. No knowledge of network protocols or network topology is necessary to use the system. From the user's perspective, remote files are accessed in the same manner as local files and no modifications to existing programs are needed to use the system. The Newcastle Connection was developed at the University or Newcastle upon Tyne. It is based on Bell Labs Version 7 UNIX for Digital Equipment PDP-11 computers. This thesis describes the extension or the Newcastle Connection to run on the 4.2 BSD UNIX operating system. It also details work done to enhance both the efficiency and usefulness or the Newcastle Connection. The thesis is divided into six major parts. Chapter two introduces distributed operating systems and describes some of the basic concepts involved. An overview or the Newcastle Connection is presented in chapter three. The fourth chapter describes the changes necessary to use the Newcastle Connection on 4.2 BSD UNIX. It details modifications to existing Newcastle Connection routines and the development or the software to deal with the new features provided by 4.2 BSD UNIX. Chapter five discusses some conceptual difficulties with the Newcastle Connection and proposes solutions to them. The. sixth chapter contains enhancements made to the Newcastle Connection to improve its performance and usefulness. Chapter seven discusses the use of the Newcastle Connection as a base tor the development or distributed services such as name service, file replication, and load balancing.