A Micro-Kernel-Based Multiserver File System and Development Environment

This work describes the design and implementation of a multiserver Linux file system that runs on the L4 micro kernel, a very fast micro kernel that provides a small but general set of system functions. To maintain source code compatibility with Linux, we started with the Linux code base and decomposed the file system into three components, a virtual file system, a physical file system, and an IDE device driver. Minimal modifications to the Linux code base were required. The glue between the components is automatically generated by an IDL compiler, Flick, that we adapted to our environment. Initial performance results show that our multiserver Linux file system can approach the performance of a monolithic Linux file system.