Coda File System

What is Coda?

Coda is an advanced networked filesystem. It has been developed at CMU since 1987 by the systems group of M. Satyanarayanan. in the SCS department.

Why is Coda promising and potentially very important?

Coda is a distributed filesystem with its origin in AFS2. It has many features that are very desirable for network filesystems. Currently, Coda has several features not found elsewhere.

  1. disconnected operation for mobile computing
  2. is freely available under a liberal license
  3. high performance through client side persistent caching
  4. server replication
  5. security model for authentication, encryption and access control
  6. continued operation during partial network failures in server network
  7. network bandwith adaptation
  8. good scalability
  9. well defined semantics of sharing, even in the presence of network failures

Current activities on Coda.

CMU is making a serious effort to improve Coda. We believe that the system needs to be taken from its current status to a widely available system. The research to date has produced a lot of information regarding performance and implementation on which the design was based. We are now in a position to further develop and adapt the system for wider use. We will emphasize:

The current activities with Coda are mostly aimed at making this very good file system widely available, and a network file system of choice.