Hi ye all geeks !
It seems I have excited some people and the same time made some ppl somewhat
irritated. I'd rather (try to) lay down the things more clearly ...
"Who the hell am I ?"
Am a geek, but HONESTLY, know nothing of networking more than roughly how to
setup a network or write some networking apps using the Sockets API on
Linux/UNIX ...
"Then where in the world did the idea came from ?"
Well, I was trying to figure out Relocation Semantics for the elf32 format ...
and ( Ok ... it's normal that u laugh at this ... but it was 2 am in the
morning ... and freezing cold ... ) I realized I have total 44 GB of storage
and am only using just about 1/2 of it ... how much code will I write in my
life and ... I don't also intend to install any more OSs ... I have the very
old RH 6.2, Debain r2.2, RH 7.3 and FreeBSD 4.7 ... wont ever use Windog ...
SIMPLY speaking wont be able to utilise all my storage !!!
Then how do I utilize it at all ... the answer was simple ( atleast at that
time!!!) ... share it ... how do I share it ... am not on any network ...
What if we had the network ... then possibly ... I could share my disk ... and
since we'd have a network and sharing the disks ... might as well try to
share CPU time ... ( reminds me of one Mr. Sheikh Chillie !)
"What advantages do we have ?"
I wrote it then and am writing it now also ... "the feel good factor" ...
it'll feel like being somewhere close to Star Trek ... ( uhh but what if
somebody likes James Bomb ... oh sorry James Bond ... kindly excuse )
And on a more serious note ... walking a little bit more upwards on the
Learning Curve we all follow ... and ... the creation of a resource which
might form the basis of some pretty serious/important work this group might
do in the future.
"So how could it work ... if at all ?"
Well ... the foremost hurdle that I mentioned ... and all of us p'bly know ...
the lack of an inexpensive, always-on network backbone ... but we dont have
it ... and without that we'll and-up writing just some kind of "Yahoo
Briefcase" application ... and honestly ... I dont know where n how we can
establish that kind of network ... ( although I could figure out how to write
that brief case "Briefcase", actually anybody can ... it's simpler)
The SETI and the SETI@home projects might give some hints (on how to delegate
some task to another CPU on the network) ... but even that rely on Internet
... nothing bad abt that ... but I dont somehow feel that bringing the
network up for a limited period of time will make any of us happy ???
IF however the network IS available ... then shouldnt NFS provide the storage
sharing solution ?
"What am I willing to put in ?"
1. Patience
2. Weekends
3. My box ... even if it needs to be "moved around" during the initial phases.
4. And if it gets really serious ... maybe some moolah too.
Regards,
Gagan.
--
Ken Rules, Unix Liberates, Linux Unites.
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