Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1998 11:31:02 -0700 From: John Heidemann <johnh@isi.edu> To: "Alton, Matthew" <Matthew.Alton@anheuser-busch.com>, "'Terry Lambert'" <tlambert@primenet.com>, FreeBSD-fs@FreeBSD.ORG, Hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, "Smallie, Scott" <Scott.Smallie@anheuser-busch.com> Subject: Re: Stackable filesystems and SunOS 4.1.1 Message-ID: <199806241831.LAA10210@dash.isi.edu> In-Reply-To: <31B3F0BF1C40D11192A700805FD48BF9017765F1@STLABCEXG011>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Back from a trip I can finally pick up this thread:
On Wed, 17 Jun 1998 18:21:37 -0500, "Alton, Matthew" wrote:
>...
>It is conceivable that Sun may be persuaded to release the sources for a fee
>a la SCO's "Ancient Versions" source license. If so, we FreeBeasties could
>benifit from the mature SunOS 4.1.1 stackable filesystem code. Maybe we
>should pester them.
On Fri, 19 Jun 1998 10:48:51 -0500, "Alton, Matthew" wrote:
> I apologize for being hopelessy vague and incomplete here. I was
>thinking about
> John Heidemann's work. His web page says that his primary development
> platform was SunOS 4.1.1 and that there is "unsatisfactory" code in
>Free- &
> Net- BSD. I downloaded the necessarily incomplete (license issues)code
>from
> his site and was pining away for the rest.
First, I don't think I've ever said the 4.4BSD stacking code was
``unsatisfactory''...it's just not a complete version of what was in
the thesis. (This was for a variety of reasons, including time and
other reasons.)
For people wanting to expand BSD stacking, I can imagine some
interesting projects:
- adding support for user-level file-systems
- replacing parallel lists of vnops in the filesystems
(ex. ffs_{specop,fifoop}_opv_desc) with a generic
ffs node that stacks over a spec/fifo node
- building a real compression/encryption layer
- structuring CD-ROM file systems as a set of layers
(I don't know how hard this would be...)
Of these things, none would hugely benefit from the SunOS-specific
code. Only the first really requires code that's not already in BSD.
Because of differences between BSD and SunOS' NFS implementations, I
doubt full access to my modified SunOS-4.1.1 source code would
substantally more helpful than just starting with the code on my web
page, and it would raise lots of licensing issues that are best not
messed with.
More than more stacking infrastructure, I think BSD would benefit
from more *use* of stacking (the last 3 bullets).
-John Heidemann
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-fs" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199806241831.LAA10210>