Samba into kernel

[David Lee]

In recent weeks, I have had a quick chat, off-list, with a well-known list
member about the possibility and desirability of allowing parts of Samba
to be put into the kernel of those versions of UNIX (Solaris for me) that
support it. 

The particular impetus was to try to reduce context switching on "big" 
Samba installations: those running several hundred or even thousand
simultaneous connections.  There would probably be other benefits, such as
the opportunity to allow oplocks to interact more closely with UNIX
locking.  (And, of course, there are probably many inherent security
related issues that would need much caution and care.)

We noted that Veritas already seem to have done this in the ServPoint
software (see their White Paper "VERITAS ServPoint Appliance Software for
NAS", pages 2 and 3).  This re-assured us that my thoughts were at least
partially sane.

Naturally, this would be a significant piece of work.  So the principle
would require the approval of the Samba Team, and I would guess that any
implementation would also require the involvement, even if only as
occasional over-seer, of a Team member (the bulk of the work may well be
done by others). 

Is there any mileage in this possibility?  Or should I stop right there? 


-- 

:  David Lee                                I.T. Service          :
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