On Tue, Sep 13, 2005 at 08:23:57PM -0400, Timothy Miller wrote:
> An open source, distributed, fault-tolerant, portable part number
> system with human-readable backup data would be a boon to companies
> everywhere.
>
> It would be wonderful if the OGP could inspire other OSS projects.
> Maybe this should be one?
Other open source projects have been forced to create tools that
were useful to others. Why not us?
Here are my one-quarter baked preliminary thoughts.
As I said yesterday, the infrastucture and tools to support a number
log should be the most basic and traditional features and utilities of Unix.
This maximizes future-proofing.
A good form of organization might be a directory tree, with each log
entry file consisting of a single line of text containing four tab-separated
fields. Permissions would be set so that any authorized designer could
write a new file, and edit it for a specific time after first writing it.
Permissions should be set to make all files and directories world-readable,
but no files or directories could be deleted or changed without
extraordinary effort. (Turn on root write permission, turn off sticky bits,
etc.) Not even root should be able to alter information without
extraordinary effort.
The writable on-line log should have multiple sites, with automatic
synchronization of new entries with very short latency. Any accidental
conflicting assignment of a number should be immediately reported to both
designers.
There should be a stated procedure to write backup snapshots to
durable media and store them in safe locations. It's safest never to
rewrite media; the log is extraordinarily critical to the organization.
It may be desirable for designers to cryptographically sign their
entries, but that would probably be more beneficial for ECOs and released
drawings. The main requirement with the log is to prevent loss of entries,
once entered.
That's all I have time for now. Leaving for an appointment.
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