METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL OF NAME SPACE INFORMATION IN A DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING SYSTEM

摘要

A distributed computing environment is disclosedwhich allows a user at one location to access resources atother locations. Each resource in the distributedcomputing environment is represented as a hierarchicalfile system. A user or process has a name space comprisedof at least one hierarchical file system provided by aconnected resource. The distributed computing environmentallows a first processor to invoke execution of aprocessing task by a remote processor. The firstprocessor transmits a representation of its current namespace to the remote processor. The remote processor willexecute the processing task on a name space modified inaccordance with the name space representation receivedfrom the first processor. The transmitted representationof the name space associated with the first processorincludes at least one dynamic name space modificationcommand, such as those executed by a user after logginginto the distributed computing system. A plurality ofdata structures are provided for storing path informationwhich allows the pathname of a given channel, whichrepresents a file, to be determined. The stored pathinformation allows the hierarchical file tree of aconnected file system to be generated.