AFS in FreeBSD ...

[Robert Watson]

On Mon, 21 Jan 2008, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

> As Robert has stated in the thread I started last week, he's willing to lend 
> a hand with getting the kenrel module *as part of* the kernel, but what does 
> it take to get it to that point?
>
> I just downloaded Jason's initial port attempt, but it is almost a year old:
>
>         <http://www.stradamotorsports.com/~jcw/openafs/>
>
> Has anyone looked at the work he's done so far?  Ignoring the client side 
> for now, Jason, what would it take to get your work to the point where 
> Robert could inject it into the core FreeBSD system, as opposed to an 'add 
> on'?  What would be involved in getting 1.5.x working?

I'm not sure there's a benefit to importing the OpenAFS server into the 
FreeBSD src tree, given that it's already well-maintained and fairly 
functional as a port.  The main area of potential benefit is, in fact, the 
Arla client, which would then be able to track FreeBSD VFS changes, and offers 
a relatively static interface to the userland components that could continue 
to live in the port.

After chatting with a few of the OpenAFS folks, the current concensus is that 
the OpenAFS client kernel parts are a lot more involved than the Arla ones, as 
much of the cache manager is implemented there, whereas with Arla it's just a 
user file system interface and so a lot less complex.

So I think the short-term plan, if the Arla folks are willing and we can get a 
functional Arla module sync'd to 8-CURRENT, would be to get nnpfs into 
FreeBSD's src/sys.

Robert N M Watson
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge