[linux-cifs-client] Named pipe support for support of RPC

[simo]

On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 14:44 -0500, Steve French wrote:
> The WINE team and others have requested that we add named pipe support
> (at least as a client, since Samba server has some pipe support
> already) - which is important to be able to get to management calls in
> Samba and Windows, but also needed for certain apps.   This would be
> fairly easy to do in cifs.ko (open/read/write/close are not much
> different for pipes than files, although lookup would require "lookup
> intents" to work and they would not show up in readdir), but I was not
> sure if there was a precedent for how named pipes would show up (if at
> all) in the namespace.   In Windows and a few other OS, the client
> side passes the UNC name through the syscall (open) - e.g.
> \\server\pipe\pipename and the VFS dispatches that to the registered
> named pipe handlers - but in Linux it probably makes sense to do this
> through a pseudo-filesystem which Wine can look for and open files
> (pipes) in.   Is there a precedent for something similar or a pipe
> pseudo file system?

If at all possible it would probably make sense to use the same naming
convention and not a pseudo filesystem. This would make it much easier
to port applications and I guess also allow user apps to share data
through pipes created in the normal name space with windows servers.

Simo.

-- 
Simo Sorce
Samba Team GPL Compliance Officer <simo at samba.org>
Senior Software Engineer at Red Hat Inc. <ssorce at redhat.com>