RFC: backporting GEOM to the 4.x branch

[ALeine]

jeremie at le-hen.org wrote: 

> This may not be exactly what you are looking for, but I think it
> may be important to look at it at least :
> 
>	  http://www.filesystems.org/
> 
> The project is named FiST and it uses stackable layers so you
> can, for example, encrypt file content.

Thanks, I'm actually familiar with the inner workings of Erez Zadok's
(FiST based) CryptFS, it's been running on my test system for about 2
years now. The problem with CryptFS is that it's not of production
quality, it's more of a proof-of-concept academic type of implementation.
Back in 2003 I tracked down a serious (kernel-panic-causing) off-by-one
bug in the FreeBSD 4 and 5 vnode fistgen templates for which I also
submitted a patch. Erez said he would see to it that the patch got
committed, but I just checked and I see that that bug is still present
in the latest version (0.0.7). Oh well, if you want to use CryptFS on your
FreeBSD 4.x and 5.x systems without kernel panics feel free to contact me
for the patch. Maybe someone would be willing to put the patch somewhere
on freebsd.org so that new CryptFS users can easily find it?

Anyway, Erez has also been working on NCryptFS, which seems quite promising:

http://filesystems.org/docs/ncryptfs/ncryptfs.html

The problem with NCryptFS is that so far no code has been released and
since it looks like it might get released a day after Duke Nuke 'em
Forever I thought I would see what I can do about backporting GDBE
to the 4.x branch. :-/

ALeine
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