Some linux-cifs-client ideas

[Alexander Bokovoy]

On Mon, Aug 23, 2004 at 06:19:29PM +0200, Simo Sorce wrote:
> I and Steve had a long discussion one evening at the CIFS conference.
> We talked of some interesting possible developments, that are close to
> what Stefan is asking here :-)
> 
> On Mon, 2004-08-23 at 17:49, David Collier-Brown wrote:
> > > 1. What we want
> > > 
> > > - - Every unix user should be able to mount and umount cifs shares when 
> > > he wants it,
> > > ~  so not only at login time. (using it's own credentials: user/dom/pass 
> > > or krb5...)
> > 
> > 	Yes, preferably using either the system default means ("user" or
> > 	"users" on a mount line, or a mechanism other than the standard
> > 	mount, as you describe below.
> 
> Well being able to mount a filesystem or not should still be in control
> and permitted only by root, but we discussed about this bit.
> 
> 1. We need a mechanism to ask userland about credentials so that when a
> user cd into another user's directory the kernel is able to ask userland
> about credentials.
> 
> For that we will probably need a facility in /proc or in a new virtual
> filesystem (/cifs may be a good name).
> 
> The idea is to use kernel notifies so that each user can attach a
> process on that virtual file and ask the kernel to notify any change (eg
> /cifs/.usrnotify/).
It would be good to attach Dbus agent as it would allow to integrate with
graphical environment a bit easier, especially given that both GObject and
QT event mechanisms are already supported in Dbus.

> 2. We need a mechanism to cache credentials in case we get disconnected
> from the server or events like that, Steve told me that someone is
> building a generalized kernel facility to store credentials, so I think
> we can use that too and be consistent. (I can't remember the project
> name, Steve can probably send in some pointer).
DBus might come good on this too.
 
> 3. we need a way to tell the system to forget credentials.
Same here.
 
-- 
/ Alexander Bokovoy
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