[comp.os.research] Summary: Getting info about Sprite over the Internet

steve@yoyodyne.mit.edu (Steve Jones) (02/16/91)

Greetings,

	A while back I posted a request to this newsgroup for
help in getting information about the Sprite project at UC Berkeley. I
was shocked at the large number of helpful responses I received, and
would like to thank everyone who took the time to respond. I would
also like to apologize for taking so long to write this summary, but
minor things like a departmental reorganization have gotten in the
way. ;-)

	Where to start. First, there are several papers available for
anonymous FTP on sprite.berkeley.edu. Please note that this is just an
alias for the machine allspice.berkeley.edu - don't be surprised when
you are greeted by allspice. There are only a few papers, and they
aren't kept in any particular place, and there are some papers on
topics that are tangentally related to Sprite, such as Tcl and Tk (see
comp.windows.x for more info on these - or get the papers...).

Here are some of the papers available that were most relevant to the
OS itself:

amsp.ps.Z	4-Feb-1991 draft comparing Sprite vs. Amoeba
		Douglis, Kaashock, Tanenbaum, Ousterhout

lfsUsenix90.ps	Summer '90 USENIX paper in the Log-structured File System
		Compares lfs/Sprite vs. SunOS on comparable hardware
		Rosenblum, Ousterhout

mig.ps		paper on Sprite process migration (no date)
		Douglis, Ousterhout

sedmsII-test.ps	March '91 SEDMS-II paper on cache performance in Sprite
		Welch


	In addition to these, some reports are available based on work
that's been done at Digital's Western Research Lab, a.k.a DECWRL.
These papers can be retrieved from the archive server run by that
organization. Papers are retrieved by referencing the year and report
number for a given article. They are only available in Postscript
form. To get them directly from the source, send the following two
lines to "wrl-techreports@decwrl.dec.com"

send postscript 89/5
send postscript 90/4

These papers discuss the following issues:

89/5		An implementation of NFS using Sprite cache consistency
		protocol
		Srinivasan, Mogul 

90/4		The performance and trade-offs of Sprite's dynamic
		virtual memory vs. file system cahce division of
		physical memory.
		Nelson


	An information packet has been produced by the Sprite group
and may be requested by sending an electronic mail message to the
address "sprite-request@sprite.berkeley.edu" making sure to reference
the "sprite packet."

	In addition to these ways to procure the actual papers, I
received a LaTeX bibliography of Sprite documents courtesy Jim
Mott-Smith of the Sprite group. I believe this can also be requested
from the "sprite-request" address, but don't quote me on that.

	I've taken all of these publications and made them available
for anonymous FTP on yoyodyne.mit.edu. If you can't get anonyFTP to
work, send me some EMail. Note, this includes the bibliography, but
not necessarily the papers in the bibliography.

	yoyodyne.mit.edu:~ftp/pub/info/Sprite/
	[18.80.0.200]


Many thanks to all the people who responded: 

	Fred Douglis
	Adam Glass
	Mike Kupfer
	Jeffrey Mogul
	Jim Mott-Smith
	Craig Partridge
	Brian Pawlowski
	Rich Scott
	Brent Welch

If I left anyone out, I will feel deeply ashamed. So don't tell me ;-)
Also be aware that I have no affiliation that I know of with UCB or
DECWRL, and what I've done may be completely against their wishes. If
I am informed that they prefer I not do any of this specifically or
generally, the offending act shall be remedied swiftly. 

Hope this is of use to someone.
--Steve.
-- 
Steve Jones    MIT/VAX Resource Center, Cambridge MA  02139    617/253-7438
Internet addresses:  steve@isis.mit.edu  steve@yoyodyne.mit.edu
"Chaos will ensue if the variable i is altered..." - SysV Programmers Guide