better network filesystems

[Michael B Allen]

Steve French said:
> We need better network filesystems - so says newsforge ... ?!

Nah, we just need one good one.

>     http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/11/29/1528259&from=rss

Shallow article. Wasn't Intermezzo removed from Linux because it wasn't
being maintained?

> cifs client (perhaps by 2.6.12) but it would not be -- that -- hard to
> fix cifs/Samba or nfsv4 client/server with modest standards and protocol
> enhancements to achieve their goals, and there are a lot of advantages
> of Samba over the AFS server :)

CIFS and NFS stink (don't know anything about AFS but it must stink too or
we'd be using it). CIFS is too many layers of protocol. Think about the
layers one goes through to write a buffer of data in an RPC -- NetBIOS ->
SMB -> SMB Transactions -> Named Pipe -> DCE PDU. NFS doesn't integrate
with The Enterprise easily. Think about what is involved in setting up a
server, creating an export and granting access to the right users.

> I wonder if many realize how many of these interesting fs features are
> already possible in the smb/cifs protocols - now.

Just being able to check stuff off in some list doesn't count IMHO. It
wouldn't be that hard to create a relatively simple but modular protocol
with a good range of features. We DO need a better network filesystem.
Actually I would probably abstract the "filesystem" part out and make it a
little more generic so that you're just sending back and fourth serialized
objects which could be files or entire trees that are automatically
archived and compressed during serialization. Yikes I think I should give
up here - I'm really out in left field :->

Mike