first swipe at ctdb spec file

[Christopher R. Hertel]

tridge at samba.org wrote:
> Chris,
> 
>  > Quick question:  is this the pCIFS that Peter Brahm started working on a few
>  > years back or something different?
> 
> I've no idea what Peter worked on.

Have you had a chance to look at pNFS (which is in the NFSv4.1 spec.)?

A few years ago, Peter proposed a complimentary pCIFS which would allow
clients direct access to the block storage.  Metadata management would be
handled via CIFS but the clients, once they held an appropriate lock, would
do direct block I/O (via iSCSI, Fibre Channel, or other methods).

I was speaking with folks from Panasas a couple of weeks ago.  Garth gave a
pNFS presentation and afterwards we started talking about the flexibility of
the Linux implementation of pNFS, and the possibility that the client-side
code could also be used to support pCIFS functionality.  The Panasas folks
sounded interested, but I think they'd want to know more about the
possibility of follow-through from both Samba and the Linux CIFS VFS client.

So back to my question:  When Ronnie talks about pCIFS which pCIFS is that
and what is it intended to do?  Do we have a collision in the name space or
is someone (not unusually) way ahead of me?

>  > I'm interested in the API at present.
> 
> The API is there, but the client half of it (which is what you would
> use) is not yet cleanly separated from the server. I've started doing
> that, but it will take some time yet.
> 
> We'll end up with a libctdb library, which is what applications will
> use. The code in common/ctdb_client.c is the basis for that library.

I will take a look.

Thanks.

Chris -)-----

-- 
"Implementing CIFS - the Common Internet FileSystem" ISBN: 013047116X
Samba Team -- http://www.samba.org/     -)-----   Christopher R. Hertel
jCIFS Team -- http://jcifs.samba.org/   -)-----   ubiqx development, uninq.
ubiqx Team -- http://www.ubiqx.org/     -)-----   crh at ubiqx.mn.org
OnLineBook -- http://ubiqx.org/cifs/    -)-----   crh at ubiqx.org