VFS

[David Collier-Brown]

Chris Farey wrote:
> 
> Looking through the documentation on the VFS layer, I couldn't
> help wondering if perhaps it should be done differently. One
> problem with serving CIFS from a UNIX server is that the underlying
> file system model used by NTFS is different from that used by
> UNIX file systems. Would it have been better to design the VFS
> layer to have more of an NTFS feel than a UNIX feel? By that I
> mean to have it use Unicode file names, NT file attributes, support
> for named streams etc. It would then be up to the underlying file system
> to decide which features it supported, and to return appropriate errors
> (or whatever) when asked to do something it did not support.

	Well, I mildly disagree.

	Samba is a mapping of Windows SMB semantics onto
	Unix file- (and printing-) systems, so the things
	which are specific to Windows and NT should not flow
	right through into the filesystem "below" it.

	At the same time, the VFS needs to support the
	most featurefull of the filesystems we can use,
	including things like ACLs.  However, this is
	a relatively simple addition to what's there today.

> Just a thought - what do people think?

	The best counter-arguement to what I claimed
	is the possibility of Linux supporting R/W NT
	filesystems in the foreseeable future: it would
	be silly to translate unicode filenames to ascii
	and then back again inside Samba (;-))


--dave
-- 
David Collier-Brown,  | Always do right. This will gratify some people
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