>would the dead processes include everything but the boot-time >helpers? from the perspective of any users of the system, wouldn't >this be equivalent to a reboot?
>have you tested rebooting either machine while the other is >running? have you tested a three machine scenario? >this reminds me of nfs cross mounting. how is this different? Thanks for your interest. Certainly, if the file descriptors being used by your active applications die, those apps are pretty much dead. The question of why the scenario is an improvement on rebooting depends on the specifics - one answer is that in the usage model I find most optimal, I like to base what I regard as the most essential services, including the cpu -R listener, either out of boot or a ramfs, so the system remains available for remote dial-in and administration. I find that being able to drawterm in, mount sources for access to the full disttribution, and then work to reset/repair and environment is a lot more pleasant than plugging in a monitor to a box I prefer to run headless and then rebooting and hoping that the issues that forced the reboot (such as unavailable network resources) are in good enough shape to get things put back together. The example I gave of starting venti then rooting from a remote fossil using that venti isn't a particularly important specifically, I simply wanted to illustrate the fact that moving to a more interactive and configurable post kernel load boot sequence creates additional possibilities. The initial motivation was simply that with a grid that uses separate venti, fossil, and cpu, the imposed boot order dependency and the fact that the loss of one server could make the others later in the chain unusable even though they still had running kernels and control of the hardware seemed suboptimal. I love the ability to distribute system components, but I wanted to be able to keep interacting with my cpu server even if I needed to reboot the fossil. However, I don't want to seem defensive, and these bootup modification patches are not anything I want to try to claim as the best possible system. Just on the technical level the plan9rc I'm using doesn't cover 100% of the cases handled by the standard tools - it assumes the only types of disk drives in the world are sdC0, C1, D0, D1 at the moment, for instance. ~mycroftiv
