A group communication mechanism for Amoeba Minix

Abstract

This thesis describes the design and development of a group communication mechanism for the Minix operating system. Minix currently supports a message exchange mechanism between one process and another. The processes exchanging messages can reside on the same machine or on different machines connected by a local area network. The group communication mechanism for Minix allows a process to send a message to a group of processes distributed on the network in one system call. A group can be created by a single process, and joined by other processes. In a typical application, a group of processes may provide a similar service although the processes can be grouped by other criteria. Group communication exists within system V kernel as well. The development of group mechanism for Minix is interwound with the design philosophy for distributed groups in system V.