[colorforth] A request for CF code & data for the CF block server

[Tim Neitz <tim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Dear cflist, Tim here.

I am sending this mail to ask others to contribute colorforth code and data
to this project. This code and data will then be hosted on the public
colorforth block server. It will serve blocks via the get and put utilities
that were released recently in the file bs-client.blk. This means that one
can store any type of data on this server using the internet. If this code
is being hosted a URL is enough. For code that is not on the net please send
to: tim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx all code and data are welcome. I will only host code
or data that is intended to be public by the contributors. For that reason
even if you have a well known site, If you want your code hosted here a
reply will be needed. Again in the reply a URL is enough for code that is on
the net. You are also very welcome to contribute code even if you have no
use for this server.

This colorforth based server is on the internet and has at the moment about
8 megabytes of storage. Later much more room will be available. I will in a
seperate mail ask for input on the access system that should be implemented
to let us manage this better. These things will take time. For now I propose
the following scheme or something just as simple:

We could reserve blocks 0-10 for an index of who is using which blocks. They
could be in simple text like in this example below:

This supports a per person load screen concept, that would make ones
applications be launchable by loading that block. A status entry could
indicate code being worked on currently. Yielding something like.

User	range			load block	status
======================================================
Bob	blocks 100 - 300	100		ready
Susan	blocks 301 - 400	301		busy
Fred	blocks 401 - 1000	469 		ready
Henry	blocks 1001 - 1200	1001		busy


Concurrent editing of these index blocks would still be a problem. I do
think it is an acceptable starting point.

Further we would then be carefull to not access blocks from another persons
area for writing. This is indeed inadequate for a production server, but
will start the process of server access features of this block server. It
would also be easy to adjust the client for ones offset. This would let them
think that it is a range from 0 - max-blocks-this-user. I also suggest that
we keep local copies of our work. This server will be reliable, and will get
backed up. But this project is in an early stage.


Server development status is as follows:

The server has been up for several days now, I can access it from home, and
use it daily. At this point the server is not backed up, It is also not
populated. The plan at hand is to back this system up to a second cf machine
via the internet, this machine will then write the archive to ide disk. This
machine is in a seperate building from the server. I am starting this as my
next colorforth task. It should not cause in itself an interruption of
service. Until then local copies are a must to prevent data loss. Further
some small changes would be needed to support the access scheme mentioned
above. I will wait for feedback, and then implement the changes if any are
suggested. If none are suggested I will start with the scheme that I have
presented here. Please keep in mind that at the moment I need to choose for
something easy to implement. Later there will be a more robust access
system. This more robust system will take month's in total to finish due to
my busy schedule. I am looking for the best easy method until then. This
will allow others to gain the benefits of this server now. Some of these
advantages are subtle, but really helpfull. It has for me almost eliminated
the swapping of floppies. I use a standard client floppy and get/develop the
code from the server. It also allows me to write protect the floppy disk.
This makes crash recovery much better, the client will "always" reboot. The
code that caused the client crash will still be on the server to try
again...

With kind regards,

Tim Neitz.
rj_cf on #c4th IRCnet
tim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx


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