From owner-freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jan 17 00:09:44 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7557B16A417 for ; Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:09:44 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rick@kiwi-computer.com) Received: from kiwi-computer.com (keira.kiwi-computer.com [63.224.10.3]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 1465F13C4F4 for ; Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:09:43 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rick@kiwi-computer.com) Received: (qmail 54953 invoked by uid 2001); 17 Jan 2008 00:09:42 -0000 Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 18:09:42 -0600 From: "Rick C. Petty" To: Jeffrey Hutzelman Message-ID: <20080117000942.GA54906@keira.kiwi-computer.com> References: <18CC5A4A2AC36D7FF57615EE@ganymede.hub.org> <478AF6BC.8050604@highperformance.net> <20080114142124.Y55696@fledge.watson.org> <876FB8E38251C27B14CCCA29@atlantis.pc.cs.cmu.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <876FB8E38251C27B14CCCA29@atlantis.pc.cs.cmu.edu> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.3i Cc: rra@stanford.edu, port-freebsd@openafs.org, freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.org, Robert Watson , matt@linuxbox.com, freebsd-afs@FreeBSD.org, "Jason C. Wells" , openafs-devel@openafs.org Subject: Re: [OpenAFS-devel] Re: AFS ... or equivalent ... X-BeenThere: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: rick-freebsd@kiwi-computer.com List-Id: Filesystems List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:09:44 -0000 On Wed, Jan 16, 2008 at 01:48:52PM -0500, Jeffrey Hutzelman wrote: > --On Monday, January 14, 2008 02:23:47 PM +0000 Robert Watson > wrote: > > >I'd like very much to get at least the kernel parts of an AFS client into > >the base system. > That may well be realistic for arla, though I believe there was a period > for a while where the kernel/arlad interface was evolving to support > features like chunking. I pay only superficial attention to arla-drinkers, > so I don't know what the status of any of that is; for that, you'd have to > ask someone who is actively involved in arla development (I believe there > are some such people on this list). > > It is unlikely ever to happen for OpenAFS, in which virtually all of the > cache manager code is in-kernel and most of it is cross-platform. Trying > to pull the OpenAFS cache manager into the FreeBSD kernel would be > equivalent to forking OpenAFS; what you'd get would work and would keep up > with FreeBSD, but it would be unlikely to keep up with OpenAFS. > > The "let's just slurp everything into the main distribution so we don't > have to worry about stable interfaces" approach is really poor. It > encourages bad engineering practice among people maintaining the main > distribution, discourages innovation and extension by others, and generally > doesn't scale. It's far better to either attempt to maintain stable > external interfaces to the VFS and VM subsystems, or else admit that you > don't have the resources to do so given the relatively small number of > external users, in which case you almost certainly also don't have the > resources to keep on top of updates to something like OpenAFS. > > In the long run, I'm guessing that the OpenAFS cache manager evolves more > quickly than FreeBSD's VFS interface, which makes pulling the CM into the > kernel tree a losing battle. If you disagree, by all means fork that part > of AFS (or get someone else to do so) and see what happens (AFS's > user/kernel and RPC interfaces are both fairly stable, so forking just the > kernel parts should be mostly feasible). > > -- Jeff > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-fs@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-fs > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-fs-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" -- -- Rick C. Petty