From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Jul 19 9:34: 7 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from acl.lanl.gov (acl.lanl.gov [128.165.147.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 81C241521F for ; Mon, 19 Jul 1999 09:34:03 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from rminnich@acl.lanl.gov) Received: from tbp.acl.lanl.gov (root@tbp.acl.lanl.gov [128.165.147.10]) by acl.lanl.gov (8.8.8/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA07264 for ; Mon, 19 Jul 1999 10:33:19 -0600 (MDT) Received: from localhost (rminnich@localhost) by tbp.acl.lanl.gov (8.8.7/8.8.8) with ESMTP id KAA27395 for ; Mon, 19 Jul 1999 10:32:56 -0600 X-Authentication-Warning: tbp.acl.lanl.gov: rminnich owned process doing -bs Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 10:32:56 -0600 (MDT) From: "Ronald G. Minnich" To: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: USFS (User Space File System) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Sun, 18 Jul 1999, Boris Popov wrote: > On Sat, 17 Jul 1999, David E. Cross wrote: > > I am looking at a project that will require a user based process to interact > > with the system as if it were a filesystem. The traditional way I have seen > > That type of file system is very useful for simple tasks. A while > ago I'm experementing with 'IPX network browser' which shows NetWare > servers as directories and allows to go down to see volumes, print queues > etc. > It would be nice if we're have something like 'userfs' (or > 'daemonfs') with unified interface and mount command like this: > > # mount_user /mydaemon /mountpoint > > so, all that I need to create a new file system is to write > 'mydaemon' program. Great idea. I liked it so much I bought the company -- er, I mean, I wrote something like this. It's private name spaces for Linux and FreeBSD (among others) and it allows you to mount things from remote file servers into your name space. There's a technical paper at www.acl.lanl.gov/~rminnich that is a brief overview. I'll get longer technical papers and such out there this week I hope. Writing servers is pretty easy, I have two reference implementations. In fact one server is a .c file plus a server library, so the actual server is quite small. Remaining task is to get a VFS for FreeBSD. The v9fs is a start but I need help getting the rest done. It's pretty easy to do though -- I was amazed at how quickly the Linux version went once I had a v9fs-like VFS for Linux. If interested let me know. ron To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message