Re: Requesting to Review of the proposal - Improved NFS Implementation

[olafBuddenhagen]

Hi,

I'm asking about a couple of specific points of your proposal here. I'll
add some more generic remarks in GSoC web application.

On Wed, Apr 02, 2008 at 04:07:38PM +0530, Madhusudan C.S wrote:

> I will work on improving the performance of NFSv2 and fixing bugs that
> exist on the server side.

How do you intend to improve performance? Are you thinking of anything
specific that the current implementation doesn't do or does only badly?
Or is it a more generic intention to look into possible problems?

> This includes adding NFS Filesystem model which implements filesystem
> organization.

What's that?

> This stage also includes completing the support for the Mount protocol
> which is employed to mount a filesystem and create handles to access
> files on it.

What is it missing currently? Or is that what you describe below?
(Pardon my ignorance...)

> All the NFS server procedures(its nearly a misnomer since server
> procedures are actions that a client may take on files residing on a
> server) are implemented.

You mean you intend to implement them?

> Some of them include null, getattr, setattr, root, lookup, statfs,
> readdir etc which are not present in the current implementation but
> part of the NFS's Remote Procedure Calls(RPC).

Could you give a short summary what these do?

I'm surprised that it works at all with so many things missing...

>    The next stage of this project starts with implementing the core
>    NFSv3 protocols.
[...]
>    3.  Additional file attributes in many replies including fourth set
>    of permission bits

Is that really related to NFSv3?...

Anyways, this is only meaningful if both the client *and* the server
understand the Hurd extensions -- as you said that we don't have a
usable server anyways, I would leave it out for now...

>   6.  Improved file locking support with GNU/Linux

Does NFSv3 provide improvements in this regard?

I do experience many locking problems myself, but I'm not sure where
they come from. It could be deficiencies in the NFS client, but it also
might be just the general locking problems we have on the Hurd...

Also, I had some locking problems as well when running a GNU/Linux NFS
client with the GNU/Linux server for testing -- so I wonder whether the
problem is actually on the server side...

>    Other Hurd specific functions such as adding support for 1.
>    Changing a file's author 2.  Passive translators
> 
>     are also implemented.

You mean you want to implement these as well? Well, see above regarding
fourth permission bit...

>    With these features of NFS ready, the next stage of the project is
>    to test these implementations with the GNU/Linux servers

You will have to test all the changes you make with GNU/Linux servers
anyways, as we have no other available... :-)

>    2.  Analysis and Design I ( May 26th ? June 1st ) Involves the
>    analysis of  existing code. Interacting with the mentor, the Hurd
>    community and other people involved in implementation of NFS on
>    other platforms to draw the exact design of the proposed NFSv2
>    implementation. Preparing algorithms required for NFSv2
>    implementation completion.

Well, the NFSv2 part is about fixing some problems and filling in some
gaps in the existing implementation... I don't think there is any
serious design work involved in that.

-antrik-