tech-net archive

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index][Old Index]

Re: Google Summer of Code Project: Port OpenAFS Client



Antti Kantee wrote:
Hi,

On Mon Mar 29 2010 at 14:12:33 -0500, Matt Smith wrote:
Hello,

I've been working on NetBSD for a while at Iowa State University and we have
been running Arla whenever we need AFS support on a client machine. Since
Arla does not yet work with the latest release of NetBSD, we have to use
either NetBSD 3 or 4, so I can see how porting the OpenAFS client over could
be immensely useful. Since I have dealt with both of these and their
interactions so much in the past, I have a lot of interest in seeing this
actually happen and there is no better way to get something accomplished
than to do it yourself.

I do have plenty of experience in using both of the systems, but I have
never actually delved very far into the actual programming aspects of either
of them so I do not know enough at the moment to be able to decide whether
using the new LKM interface or PUFFS would be better to implement the port.
I'm curious as to if anyone knows which would be better or even just the
benefits of using one over the other.

I would never ever implement a network client in the kernel.  It is
extremely difficult to do in the first place and hard to get right even
in very mature code (cf. our nfs client).
Hi pooka,

while I agree with your opinion in general, I think that the AFS client is a special case because it already exists and is written to fit in kernel. There is not much glue code needed to be written to make it run under NetBSD, compared to start from scratch, and there is the benefit of support of the common code from all other platforms.

I myself would also like to see an AFS client work under NetBSD again, independent
of whether it is Arla, OpenAFS or anything else.

-- Ragge


Home | Main Index | Thread Index | Old Index