vfs interface - ioctl question

[Simo Sorce]

On Tue, 2002-11-26 at 03:20, Anu Engineer wrote:
> Hi , 
> 
>  I completely agree, the right thing to do is to create an NTFS
> emulation layer that do NTFS like functions that is done currently in
> SAMBA. But When do you plan to do such an Interface, is it planned for 
> near future ?

If it were for me, I would have yet started to code.
Unfortunately at the moment I have little time, however I'm confident we
will start soon.

> As regards the IOCTL usage, what would happen is that each File System
> maintainer would have to have his own separate patch , that is SAMBA
> will support only Unix File Systems as it does right now. Each Physical
> File System person who wants to use IOCTLs would have to maintain there
> own patches, But that is irrelevant if you are able to create a
> ntfs->posix layer.

Ok, but if you need a patch to use the ioctl, then you do not need
anymore the ioctl, but simply patch the code where you need to pass down
informations.

> Ps. I have been thinking about this problem of how samba is constructed
> as a Windows-to-Unix Gateway, it would have been nice if samba had a 3
> level architecture, One that deals with the Network ( SMB stuff ) gives
> you a clean packet interface at the end ,  another than deal with lots
> of CIFS-isms like Open in read mode with Truncate, support for search
> attributes in a path operation like delete( Utils layer - like current
> samba with  unix_convert, check_name ... )  and a third layer that did
> the ntfs->Posix emulation ( I think the current VFS layer is a bit too
> Unix specific) 

Yes, samba is not what can be called the best modularized/organized
project on the earth :-)
However to reach that modularity we would have to rewrite a lot of the
samba internals. Not that it is not a thing to achive, but it will
require time.

> This will allow SAMBA to run on all kinds of file systems, the classic
> one will be a file system that is quite like NTFS in Unix but will be
> able to run SAMBA over it. Currently if I have a NTFS like file system
> with ACL's ( Windows Acl's ) and other meta-data information then one
> needs to go into SAMBA and change code. Where as if you can cleanly
> re-define these interfaces then it will be much more easier to support
> more complex( diverse)  file systems.

Yes, this is our goal.

Simo.

-- 
Simo Sorce - simo.sorce at xsec.it
Xsec s.r.l.
via Durando 10 Ed. G - 20158 - Milano
tel. +39 02 2399 7130 - fax: +39 02 700 442 399
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