
The Translucent File Service (1988) [pdf] - jxub
http://mcvoy.com/lm/papers/SunOS.tfs.pdf
======
mpweiher
Neat! I didn't know the copy-on-write semantics for filesystems went back that
far, the first I knew about was UnionFS[1][2], which features the same
semantics in a larger package.

[1] [http://unionfs.filesystems.org](http://unionfs.filesystems.org)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnionFS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnionFS)

~~~
Fnoord
> I didn't know the copy-on-write semantics for filesystems went back that far

WAFL [1] from NetApp was/is widely in use, utilising CoW, and possibly older
than this paper (wasn't able to verify but I know its from '90s at least).

This paper might've been interesting for the legal dispute between Sun and
NetApp. Got settled with Oracle in 2010 though.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write_Anywhere_File_Layout](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write_Anywhere_File_Layout)

~~~
close04
TFS introduced copy-on-write in 1986 (with SunOS 3). This is probably the
first such implementation. Not sure if there was anything comparable before
that, meeting the same definition of _layered_ and _copy-on-write_.

WAFL came a few years later - in development in the early '90s, reached
production in 1994.

~~~
Fnoord
My bad, I read through the document but I misread it as 1998.

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lgats
[https://exif.tools/http://mcvoy.com/lm/papers/SunOS.tfs.pdf](https://exif.tools/http://mcvoy.com/lm/papers/SunOS.tfs.pdf)

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toddh
NSE was an awesome development environment when it worked. Unfortunately, it
often became corrupted and suffered a lot of down time. Just a touch too much
cleverness for the systems at the time.

