A file replication facility for berkeley unix

This paper describes two mechanisms – reproduction sets and metafiles – that provide low‐cost, semi‐automatic file replication and location transparency facilities for an interconnected collection of machines running Berkeley Unix. A reproduction set is a collection of files that the system attempts to keep identical; this is done on a ‘best effort’ basis, with the system relying on the user to handle unusual situations. A metafile is a special file that contains symbolic pathnames of other files, each of which may be on any machine in the network; opening a metafile results in opening an available constituent file. Examples are given to illustrate the use of these mechanisms. Their implementation and performance are also described.