Books and papers

These are some publications and books I wrote. They are arranged on sections depending on the system they refer to, or put in the miscellaneous section if they do not refer to a particular system we made. Within each section, the most recent one goes first.

Textbooks

Introducción a Sistemas Operativos utilizando UNIX. Francisco J. Ballesteros. 2016.
Notes on the Plan 9 3rd edition Kernel source Framcisco Ballesteros. Last revision in 2004.
Introduction to Operating Systems Abstractions Using Plan 9 from Bell Labs. Francisco J. Ballesteros. 2006.
Curso Practico de Programacion usando Picky como Primer Lenguaje. Francisco J. Ballesteros, Enrique Soriano, Gorka Guardiola. 2012.
Curso Practico de Programacion Usando Ada Como Primer Lenguaje. Francisco J. Ballesteros. 2009.
Introducción a la programación usando Pascal como primer lenguaje. Francisco J. Ballesteros. 2021
The picky programming language is a picky programming language intended for use with students as a first language. Similar to a bicycle with side wheels, only an actual novice would want to use it, and it’s not intended for actual usage in the real world.

Kv related

Elastic scalable transaction processing in LeanXcale. Ricardo Jimenez, Diego Burgos, Francisco Ballesteros, Marta Patiño, Patrick Valduriez. Information Systems. vol 108, 2022.
NUMA-aware Deployments for LeanXcale Database Appliance. Ricardo Jimenez-Peris, Francisco Ballesteros, Pavlos Kranas, Diego Burgos, Patricio Martínez. 9th International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science. 2019.

Clive related

ZX: A network file system for high latency network. Francisco J. Ballesteros et al. Software Practice and Experience, DOI 10.1002/spe.2550.
Structured I/O Streams in Clive: A ToolBox Approach for Wide Area Network Computing. Francisco J. Ballesteros. Journal of Internet Systems and Applications. 2017.
Lsub go. Francisco J. Ballesteros. Lsub TR 15-3.
Notes on the Go 1.4 Run-Time. Francisco J. Ballesteros. Lsub TR 15-2.
File System Stacks in Clive. Francisco J. Ballesteros. Lsub 15-1.
The Wr document writer. Francisco J. Ballesteros. Lsub TR/14/5.
The Clive Operating System. Francisco J. Ballesteros. Lsub TR/14/4. This one includes most of what was included in the previous Clive TRs. You might just read TR/14/4 and forget about the previous ones (which do not describe the interfaces we are using now, btw).
Network services in Clive . Francisco J. Ballesteros. Lsub TR/14/3. Mostly included in Lsub TR/14/4.
Clive’s ZX file systems and name spaces. Francisco J. Ballesteros. Lsub TR/14/2.
Pipes, connections, channels and multiplexors. Francisco J. Ballesteros. Lsub TR/14/1.
Channels done Right. Francisco J. Ballesteros. Lsub TR/13/1.

Nix related

Optimistic semaphores with non-deterministic choice operation for heterogeneous manycore systems. Enrique Soriano-Salvador, Gorka Guardiola, and Francisco J. Ballesteros. Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience. Volume 27, Issue 14, pages 3676–3701, 25 September 2015.08/2014; DOI: 10.1002/cpe.3363.
The selfish Nix allocator. Francisco J. Ballesteros. GSyC-TR.
Memory Management in Nix mark IV. Francisco J. Ballesteros. GSyC-TR.
A new mount table and protocol to make 9 and Nix faster. Francisco J. Ballesteros. GSyC-TR.
The Design and Implementation of the Creepy File System and the IX File Protocol. Francisco J. Ballesteros and Rogger Peppe. Unpublished.
Analyzing manycore OS design aspects in NIX. Francisco J. Ballesteros, Noah Evans, Charles Forsyth, Gorka Guardiola, Jim McKie, Ron Minnich, and Enrique Soriano. Poster, ACM SIGOPS EuroSys 2012 Conference Bern, Switzerland, 2012. Poster pdf.
Nix: a case for a manycore system for cloud computing. Francisco J. Ballesteros, Noah Evans, Charles Forsyth, Gorka Guardiola, Jim McKie, Ron Minnich, and Enrique Soriano. Bell Labs Technical Journal (Wiley). ISSN-e: 1538-7305 ISSN: 1089-7089, vol 17, number 2 2012.
High Performance Cloud Computing is Nix.. Francisco J. Ballesteros, Noah Evans, Charles Forsyth, Gorka Guardiola, Jim McKie, Ron Minnich, and Enrique Soriano. Bell Labs Technical Conference. 2011.

Octopus related

O/live: Transparent Distribution, Persistence, and Partial Replication for Ubiquitous User Interfaces. Francisco J. Ballesteros, Gorka Guardiola, and Enrique Soriano. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction. 10/2014; 30(10). DOI: 10.1080/10447318.2014.927263 (pdf for a draft).
Pervasive User Interface Elements as Synthetic Networked Files. Francisco J. Ballesteros, Gorka Guardiola and Enrique Soriano-Salvador. 7th International Conference.Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science Volume 8276, 2013, pp 78-85. ISBN:978-3-319-03175-0. Carrillo, Puerto Rico. 2013.
Multimodal Dialogue System for Interaction in AmI Environment by Means of File-Based Services. Nieves Ábalos, Gonzalo Espejo, Ramón López-Cózar, Francisco J. Ballesteros, Enrique Soriano, Gorka Guardiola. Natural Interaction with Robots, Knowbots and Smartphones, pp 69-77. Springer. ISBN:978-1-4614-8279-6. 2014.
AngryEmail? Emotion-Based E-mail Tool Adaptation. Rosa M. Carro, Francisco J. Ballesteros, Alvaro Ortigosa, Gorka Guardiola, Enrique Soriano. Ambient Assisted Living and Home Care. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2012, pp 399-406. ISBN: 978-3-642-35394-9.
Mayordomo and Octopus: A Case Study in Ambient Intelligence Environments. Nieves Ábalos, Gonzalo Espejo, Ramón López-Cózar, Francisco J. Ballesteros, Enrique Soriano, Gorka Guardiola. Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2012, pp 153-160. ISBN: 978-3-642-35376-5.
Personal Pervasive Environments: Practice and Experience. Francisco J. Ballesteros, Gorka Guardiola, and Enrique Soriano. Sensors. 12(6):7109-7125. ISSN: 1424-8220. 2012.
Octopus: An Upperware Based System for Building Personal Pervasive Environments. Francisco Ballesteros, Gorka Guardiola, Enrique Soriano. Journal of Systems and Software. 85(7):1637-1649, ISSN 0164-1212.
On the Development of Personal Pervasive Environments: An Experience Report. Francisco J. Ballesteros, Gorka Guardiola, and Enrique Soriano. Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium of Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence (UCAMI 2011). Riviera Maya, Mexico, December 2011. ISBN:978-84-694-9677-0.
Improving the performance of Styx Based Services over High Latency Links. RoSAC-2011-2. Tech. Report. Francisco J. Ballesteros, Enrique Soriano, Spyros Lalis, Gorka Guardiola.
Upperware: Bringing Resources Back to the System. Francisco J. Ballesteros, Gorka Guardiola, Enrique Soriano. IEEE Middleware Support for Pervasive Computing Workshop (PerWare) 2010, in proceedings of the PerCom 2010 Workshops.
Batching: A design pattern for flexible and efficient client-server interaction. Francisco F. Ballesteros, Fabio Kon, Marta Patiño, Ricardo Jiménez, Sergio Arévalo, Roy H. Campbell. Transactions on Pattern Languages of Programming I. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 5770/2009: 48-66 (2009). Springer. ISBN: 978-3-642-10831-0.
Upperware: Pushing the Applications Back Into the System. Gorka Guardiola, Francisco J. Ballesteros, Enrique Soriano. IWP9 2008.
Using the Octopus Francisco J. Ballesteros. GSyC TR. Also, tutorial at IWP9 2008, Volos (Greece).
Octopus 2nd. edition User’s Manual. Laboratorio de Sistemas. RoSAC-2008-01.Tech. Report.
Towards Persistent, Distributed, and Replicated User Interfaces in the Octopus Francisco J Ballesteros, Enrique Soriano, Gorka Guardiola. IWP9 2007.
Op: Styx batching for High Latency Links. Francisco J. Ballesteros, Gorka Guardiola, Enrique Soriano, and Spyros Lalis. IWP9 2007.
The Octopus: Towards Building Distributed Smart Spaces by Centralizing Everything. Francisco J Ballesteros, Pedro de las Heras, Enrique Soriano, and Spyros Lalis. UCAMI 2007.
Building the Octopus. Francisco J. Ballesteros Spyros Lalis Enrique Soriano. GSyC Tech. Rep. 2006-06.
Give Me Back My Personal Mainframe. Lessons Learned from Plan B and Position Statement. Francisco J. Ballesteros, Enrique Soriano. 2006. First International Workshop on Plan 9. Madrid, 2006.

Plan B related

Plan B: Using Files instead of Middleware Abstractions for Pervasive Computing Environments.Francisco J. Ballesteros, Enrique Soriano, Gorka Guardiola, Katia Leal. IEEE Pervasive Computing 6(3) pp. 58-65. ISSN: 1536-1268. 2007.
Human-to-Human Authorization for Resource Sharing in SHAD: Roles and Protocols Enrique Soriano, Francisco J. Ballesteros, Gorka Guardiola. Elsevier Pervasive and Mobile Computing. 3(6), pp. 607-738, ISSN: 1574-1192. 2007.
SHAD: A Human Centered Security Architecture for the Plan B Operating System Enrique Soriano, Francisco J. Ballesteros, Gorka Guardiola. IEEE PerCom 2007, NY, USA.
The Plan B OS for Ubiquitous Computing. Voice, Security, and Terminals as Case Studies. Francisco J. Ballesteros, Enrique Soriano, Gorka Guardiola Muzquiz, Katia Leal Algara. Elsevier Pervasive and Mobile Computing Journal. 2(2006), pp. 472-488. ISSN: 1574-1192. 2006.
A P2P Single Sign-On which remains Single on Smart Spaces Enrique Soriano, Francisco J. Ballesteros, Gorka Guardiola. Second International Workshop on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence (WUCAMI 06).
The LS Smart Space for Programmers Francisco J. Ballesteros, Enrique Soriano, Gorka Guardiola. Second International Workshop on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence (WUCAMI 06).
Plan B: An Operating System for Ubiquitous Computing Environments. Francisco J. Ballesteros, Enrique Soriano, Katia Leal, Gorka Guardiola. IEEE PerCom 2006.
Omero: Ubiquitous User Interfaces in the Plan B Operating System. Francisco J Ballesteros, Gorka Guardiola, Katia Leal, Enrique Soriano. IEEE PerCom 2006. (The link refers to an extended version).
Peer-to-Peer Single Sign-On Scheme for Today’s Smart Spaces Enrique Soriano, Francisco J. Ballesteros, Gorka Guardiola.
UbiTerm: A hand-held control-center for user’s activity mobility. Katia Leal, Francisco J. Ballesteros, Enrique Soriano, and Gorka Guardiola. IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Services 2005.
Traditional Systems can Work Well for Pervasive Applications. A Case Study: Plan 9 from Bell Labs Becomes Ubiquitous. Francisco J. Ballesteros, Gorka Guardiola, Enrique Soriano, and Katia Leal. IEEE PerCom 2005. (The link is an extended version).
The Design and Implementation of Plan B 3rd edition. A dynamic distributed computing environment.Francisco J. Ballesteros, Katial Leal, Gorka Guardiola, and Enrique Soriano. GSyC Tech. Rep 2004-05.
Plan B 2nd edition user’s manual. Francisco Ballesteros et al. GSyC Tech. Rep. 2004-04.
/net. A Network Abstraction for Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing Environments in the Plan B Operating System. Francisco J. Ballesteros, Eva M. Castro, Gorka Guardiola Muzquiz, Katia Leal Algara, and Pedro de las Heras Quiros. WMCSA, 2004.
Plan B: Boxes for network resources. Francisco Ballesteros, Gorka Guardiola Muzquiz, Katia Leal Algara, Enrique Soriano, Pedro de las Heras Quirós, Eva M. Castro, Andres Leonardo, and Sergio Arévalo. JBCS special issue on Adaptable computing systems., 2004.
Plan B 1st edition user’s manual. Francisco Ballesteros. TR-GSYC-2002-04.
Off++: The Network in a Box. Francisco J Ballesteros, Fabio Kon, and Roy Campbell. ECOOP Workshop on Object Orientation in Operating Systems 2000.
The Box: A Replacement for Files. Francisco J. Ballesteros and Sergio Arevalo. Proceedings of IEEE HotOS-VII. 1999. (c) IEEE.

Miscellaneous

Picky: A New Introductory Programming Language Francisco J. Ballesteros, Enrique Soriano-Salvador, and Gorka Guardiola Muzquiz. Journal of Computational Science Education. Volume 6, Issue 1. pp. 16-24. 2015.
Pepys – The Network is a File System. Sape Mullender, Pascal Wolkotte, Francisco Ballesteros, Enrique Soriano, and Gorka Guardiola. RoSAC-2011-4. This is an early design document on the ∏P file system protocol.
Zgae: Proposed file system architecture. Laboratorio de Sistemas. RoSAC-2011-3. Yet another file system plan.
Some performance experiments for simple data structures. Francisco J. Ballesteros, Enrique Soriano. RoSAC-2011-1Tech. Report.
“Creepy ∏ion i.e.”, System Support for Ambient Intelligence. Francisco J. Ballesteros-Cámara, Gorka Guardiola-Múzquiz, Enrique Soriano-Salvador. UPGRADE, Volume: 2011, Issue No. 1. 2011.
Usb serial design and experience in Plan 9 Gorka Guardiola-Múzquiz, Francisco J. Ballesteros-Cámara, Enrique Soriano-Salvador. IWP9, 2010
System Support for Smart Spaces. Francisco J. Ballesteros, Enrique Soriano, Gorka Guardiola. Book Chapter, in Handbook of Research on Ambient Intelligence: Trends and Perspectives. IGI Global. ISBN-10: 1616928573. 2010. IGI Global site.
KNX Implementation for Plan 9. Gorka Guardiola Múzquiz, Enrique Soriano Salvador, and Francisco J Ballesteros. IWP9 2009.
File indexing and searching for Plan 9. Francisco J. Ballesteros. IWP9 2009.
Email as (real) files. Francisco J. Ballesteros. IWP9 2009.
Plan 9’s Universal Serial Bus. Francisco J. Ballesteros. IWP9, 2009.
File indexing and searching for Plan 9. Francisco Ballesteros. Tech note. 2007.
LiS: Linux STREAMS. Francisco J. Ballesteros, Denis Froschauer, David Grothe, and Graham Wheeler. Linux Journal. An introduction to the STREAMS framework implemented for Linux.
Protected Tagged Objects for Ada 95 (ps). [not published].
Java: Un lenguaje de proposito general. Vicente Matellan, Jose Centeno, Pedro de las Heras, Camino Fernandez, Ignacio Aedo Jesus Gonzalez y Francisco Ballesteros. Cuadernos de Informatica. FESI. 1999.

2K, Off++, and Off

An Adaptable Data Object Service Framework for Pervasive Computing Environments. Christopher K. Hess, Francisco Ballesteros, Roy Campbell and Dennis Mickunas. Proceedings of the 6th USENIX Conference on Object-Oriented Technologies and Systems (COOTS’2001).
Mejorando NFS. Gorka Guardiola, Francisco J Ballesteros. Hispalinux 2000.
Off++: The Network in a Box. Francisco J Ballesteros, Fabio Kon, and Roy Campbell. ECOOP Workshop on Object Orientation in Operating Systems 2000.
QoS in the Off++ microkernel. Francisco J Ballesteros, Fabio Kon, and Roy Campbell. ECOOP Workshop in Quality of Service in Distributed Object Systems 2000.
An Adaptable Distributed File Service. Christopher K Hess, Francisco J Ballesteros and Roy Campbell. ECOOP PhDOOS 2000.
Interaction and Distribution of Execution Environments in 2K. Dulcineia Carvalho, Fabio Kon, Manuel Roman, Francisco Ballesteros, Christopher Hess, Roy Campbell, and Dennis Mickunas. 6th International Conference on Information Systems, Analysis and Synthesis, ISAS 2000.
2K: A Distributed Operating System for Dynamic Heterogeneous Environments. Fabio Kon, Roy Campbell, M. Dennis Mickunas, Klara Nahrstedt, and Francisco J. Ballesteros. 9th IEEE International Symposium on High Performance Distributed Computing. Pittsburgh. August 1-4, 2000
Management of Environments in 2K. Dulcineia Carvalho, Fabio Kon, Francisco Ballesteros, Manuel Roman, Roy Campbell, M. Dennis Mickunas. 7th International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems (ICPADS-2000). Iwate. Japan. July 4-7 2000.
Using Interpreted CompositeCalls to Improve Operating System Services. Francisco Ballesteros, Ricardo Jimenez, Marta Patio, Fabio Kon, Sergio Arevalo, and Roy Campbell. Software Practice & Experience.
Batching: A design pattern for flexible and efficient client-server interaction. The version after the PLoP workshop. Marta Patio, Francisco Ballesteros, Ricardo Jimenez, Sergio Arevalo, Fabio Kon, and Roy Campbell. PLoP’99. Illinois, 1999. An extended version is available as a technical report of the University of Illinois UIUCDCS-R-99-2118
Object Orientation in Off++. A distributed adaptable microKernel. Francisco J. Ballesteros, Christopher Hess, Fabio Kon, Sergio Arevalo, and Roy H. Campbell. 2nd ECOOP Workshop on Object-Orientation and Operating Systems (ECOOP-OOOSWS’99)
The Design and Implementation of the Off++ and vOff++ Microkernels. Franscisco J. Ballesteros, Christopher Hess, Fabio Kon, and Roy H. Campbell. Technical Report UIUCDCS-R-98-2086, Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. March, 1999.
The Box: A Replacement for Files. Francisco J. Ballesteros and Sergio Arevalo. Proceedings of IEEE HotOS-VII. 1999. (c) IEEE.
Efficient and Extensible Multithreaded Remote Servers. R. Jimenez Peris, M. Patino Martinez, Francisco Ballesteros, and S. Arevalo. To appear in Proc. of the International Conference on Reliable Software Technologies, Ada-Europe’99.
Towards a Grand Unified Framework For Mobile Objects. Francisco J. Ballesteros and Fabio Kon and Sergio Arevalo and Roy H. Campbell. In proceedings of the III ECOOP Workshop on Mobility and Replication. 1998. How Off++ could apply to build mobile object systems.
There is also an extended abstract of the paper to appear in the ECOOP’98 Worshop Reader.
2K: A Reflective, Component-Based Operating System for Rapidly Changing Environments. Fabio Kon, Ashish Singhai, Roy H. Campbell, Dulcineia Carvalho, Robert Moore, and Francisco Ballesteros. Proceedings of the ECOOP’98 Workshop on Reflective Object-Oriented Programming and Systems. 1998. A paper on the OS which will run on top of Off++, 2K.
The Network Hardware is the Operating System. Francisco Ballesteros, Luis Lopez. In proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems (HotOS-VI). This one describes the philosophy of the Off microkernel.
The Inherently Distributed Adaptable Off microkernel. Technical Report UC3M-TR-CS-1997-01 and also in proceedings of the Spanish JJCC’97 meeting (unrefereed). This one describes the design (and a bit of the implementation) of the Off microkernel.
A Detailed Description of Off++, a Distributed Adaptable kernel. Francisco J. Ballesteros Fabio Kon Roy H. Campbell. Department of Computer Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Report No. UIUCDCS-R-97-2035, UILU-ENG-97-1748.
Adaptable and Extensible Distributed Virtual Memory in the Off microkernel. It is a translation to english of UC3M-TR-CS-1997-02 (spanish version currently not available online).
Advice: An Adaptable and Extensible Distributed Shared Memory Architecture In Proc. of the IASTED PDCS’96, Chicago IL. In this paper we describe the design of the Off virtual memory system.
An adaptable and extensible framework for distributed object management.. In Proc. of the ECOOP’96 workshop on mobility and replication. This one shows how a distributed object system could benefit from Advice.
A Data Structure for Stacked Mappings Management. An unpublished paper containing the full implementation of a data structure named the “Chunk Store”. It can be used to implement stacked mappings in virtual memory systems.
Off, un microkernel de proposito general para construccion de Sistemas de Tiempo Real. Novatica (a spanish magazine). It describes the benefits of using Off for RT systems.

PhD Thesis

Rather old now…

Off — Un Nuevo Enfoque en la Construccion de Sistemas Operativos Distribuidos.