Amoeba: a distributed operating system for the 1990s

Author

Mullender, Sape J. ; Van Rossum, Guido ; Tananbaum, A.S. ; Van Renesse, Robbert ; van Staveren, Hans

Author_Institution

Centre for Math. & Comput. Sci., Amsterdam, Netherlands

Volume

23

Issue

5

fYear

1990

fDate

5/1/1990 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

44

Lastpage

53

Abstract

A description is given of the Amoeba distributed operating system, which appears to users as a centralized system but has the speed, fault tolerance, security safeguards, and flexibility required for the 1990s. The Amoeba software is based on objects. Objects are managed by server processes and named using capabilities chosen randomly from a sparse name space. Amoeba has a unique, fast file system split into two parts: the bullet service stores immutable files contiguously on the disk; the directory service gives capabilities symbolic names and handles replication and atomicity, eliminating the need for a separate transaction management system. To bridge the gap with existing systems, Amoeba has a Unix emulation facility consisting of a library of Unix system call routines that make calls to the various Amoeba server processes.<>

Keywords

Unix; network operating systems; Amoeba distributed operating system; Unix emulation; Unix system call routines; atomicity; bullet service; capabilities; centralized system; directory service; fault tolerance; file system; flexibility; immutable files; library; objects; replication; security; server processes; sparse name space; speed; symbolic names; Availability; Bridges; Computer science; Fault tolerant systems; File servers; File systems; Hardware; Mathematics; Operating systems; Workstations;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Computer

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9162

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/2.53354

Filename

53354