Article

Resolving file conflicts in the Ficus file system

Authors:

John Heidemann,

Gerald PopekAuthors Info & Claims

USTC'94: Proceedings of the USENIX Summer 1994 Technical Conference on USENIX Summer 1994 Technical Conference - Volume 1

Page 12

Published: 06 June 1994 Publication History

Abstract

Ficus is a flexible replication facility with optimistic concurrency control designed to span a wide range of scales and network environments. Optimistic concurrency control provides rapid local access and high availability of files for update in the face of disconnection, at the cost of occasional conflicts that are only discovered when the system is reconnected. Ficus reliably detects all possible conflicts. Many conflicts can be automatically resolved by recognizing the file type and understanding the file's semantics. This paper describes experiences with conflicts and automatic conflict resolution in Ficus. It presents data on the frequency and character of conflicts in our environment. This paper also describes how semantically knowledgeable resolvers are designed and implemented, and discusses our experiences with their strengths and limitations. We conclude from our experience that optimistic concurrency works well in at least one realistic environment, conflicts are rare, and a large proportion of those conflicts that do occur can be automatically solved without human intervention.

References

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[2] Sergio Zarur Faissol. Operation of Distributed Database Systems Under Network Partition. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1981.

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[3] Richard G. Guy. Ficus: A Very Large Scale Reliable Distributed File System. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, June 1991. Also available as UCLA technical report CSD-910018.

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[4] Richard G. Guy, John S. Heidemann, Wai Mak, Thomas W. Page, Jr., Gerald J. Popek, and Dieter Rothmeier. Implementation of the Ficus replicated file system. In USENIX Conference Proceedings, pages 63-71. USENIX, June 1990.

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[5] Richard G. Guy and Gerald J. Popek. Reconciling partially replicated name spaces. Technical ReportC SD-900010, University of California, Los Angeles, April 1990.

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[6] Richard G. Guy, Gerald J. Popek, and Thomas W. Page, Jr. Consistency algorithms for optimistic replication. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Network Protocols. IEEE, October 1993.

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[7] John S. Heidemann, Thomas W. Page, Jr., Richard G. Guy, and Gerald J. Popek. Primarily disconnected operation: Experiences with Ficus. In Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Management of Replicated Data. IEEE, November 1992.

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[8] John H. Howard. Using reconciliation to share files between occasionally connected computers. In Proceedings of the Fourth Workshop on Workstation Operating Systems, pages 56-60, Napa, California, October 1993. IEEE.

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[13] Puneet Kumar and Mahadev Satyanarayanan. Supporting application-specific resolution in an optimistically replicated file system. In Proceedings of the Fourth Workshop on Workstation Operating Systems, pages 66-70, Napa, California, October 1993. IEEE.

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[14] D. Stott Parker, Jr., Gerald Popek, Gerard Rudisin, Allen Stoughton, Bruce J. Walker, Evelyn Walton, Johanna M. Chow, David Edwards, Stephen Kiser, and Charles Kline. Detection of mutual inconsistency in distributed systems. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 9(3):240-247, May 1983.

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[15] Gerald Popek, Bruce Walker, Johanna Chow, David Edwards, Charles Kline, Gerald Rudisin, and Greg Thiel. LOCUS: A network transparent, high reliability distributed system. In Proceedings of the Eighth Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, pages 169-177. ACM, December 1981.

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[16] Gerald J. Popek, Richard G. Guy, Thomas W. Page, Jr., and John S. Heidemann. Replication in Ficus distributed file systems. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Management of Replicated Data, pages 20-25. IEEE, November 1990.

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[18] Mahadev Satyanarayanan, James J. Kistler, Puneet Kumar, Maria E. Okasaki, Ellen H. Siegel, and David C. Steere. Coda: A highly available file system for a distributed workstation environment. IEEE Transactions on Computers, 39(4):447-459, April 1990.

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Cited By

Chen JZhao MLi ZZhai EQian FChen HLiu YXu TNoh SWelch B(2020)Lock-free collaboration support for cloud storage services with operation inference and transformationProceedings of the 18th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies10.5555/3386691.3386694(13-28)Online publication date: 24-Feb-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3386691.3386694
Chen MZadok EHershcovitch MGoel AMorrison A(2019)KurmaProceedings of the 12th ACM International Conference on Systems and Storage10.1145/3319647.3325830(109-120)Online publication date: 22-May-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3319647.3325830
Viotti PVukolić M(2016)Consistency in Non-Transactional Distributed Storage SystemsACM Computing Surveys10.1145/292696549:1(1-34)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2926965
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Index Terms

Resolving file conflicts in the Ficus file system
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software organization and properties
    1. Contextual software domains
      1. Operating systems
        File systems management
    2. Software system structures
      1. Distributed systems organizing principles
2. Theory of computation
  1. Models of computation
    1. Concurrency
      1. Parallel computing models

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cover image Guide Proceedings

USTC'94: Proceedings of the USENIX Summer 1994 Technical Conference on USENIX Summer 1994 Technical Conference - Volume 1

June 1994

222 pages

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USENIX Association

United States

Publication History

Published: 06 June 1994

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Cited By

Chen JZhao MLi ZZhai EQian FChen HLiu YXu TNoh SWelch B(2020)Lock-free collaboration support for cloud storage services with operation inference and transformationProceedings of the 18th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies10.5555/3386691.3386694(13-28)Online publication date: 24-Feb-2020
Chen MZadok EHershcovitch MGoel AMorrison A(2019)KurmaProceedings of the 12th ACM International Conference on Systems and Storage10.1145/3319647.3325830(109-120)Online publication date: 22-May-2019
Viotti PVukolić M(2016)Consistency in Non-Transactional Distributed Storage SystemsACM Computing Surveys10.1145/292696549:1(1-34)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2016
Tao VRancurel VNeto JKono KShinagawa T(2015)A Name Is Not A NameProceedings of the 6th Asia-Pacific Workshop on Systems10.1145/2797022.2797034(1-8)Online publication date: 27-Jul-2015
Tran DZhang T(2014)S-PUTComputer Networks: The International Journal of Computer and Telecommunications Networking10.1016/j.comnet.2014.08.02675:PB(504-518)Online publication date: 24-Dec-2014
Mashtizadeh ABittau AHuang YMazières DKaminsky MDahlin M(2013)Replication, history, and grafting in the Ori file systemProceedings of the Twenty-Fourth ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles10.1145/2517349.2522721(151-166)Online publication date: 3-Nov-2013
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Conway NMarczak WAlvaro PHellerstein JMaier DCarey MHand S(2012)Logic and lattices for distributed programmingProceedings of the Third ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing10.1145/2391229.2391230(1-14)Online publication date: 14-Oct-2012
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Mahajan PSetty SLee SClement AAlvisi LDahlin MWalfish M(2011)DepotACM Transactions on Computer Systems10.1145/2063509.206351229:4(1-38)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2011
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