From: Jeff Garzik Subject: Re: A new NFSv4 server... Date: Fri, 04 Jan 2008 00:32:49 -0500 Message-ID: <477DC501.3060104@garzik.org> References: <477CD231.30603@garzik.org> <20080103163200.GB30029@fieldses.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Cc: nfsv4@linux-nfs.org, NFS list To: "J. Bruce Fields" Return-path: Received: from srv5.dvmed.net ([207.36.208.214]:46642 "EHLO mail.dvmed.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751755AbYADFcx (ORCPT ); Fri, 4 Jan 2008 00:32:53 -0500 In-Reply-To: <20080103163200.GB30029@fieldses.org> Sender: linux-nfs-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: J. Bruce Fields wrote: > On Thu, Jan 03, 2008 at 07:16:49AM -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote: >> At this point, I'm quite interested to hear feedback on how the server >> works with other NFSv4 clients. > > Any possibility of making Connectathon in May?: > > http://www.connectathon.org/ > > The major NFSv4 implementors normally have their clients there, so it's > usually the quickest way to find and solve any interoperability > problems. Almost all the work will probably be on sessions and pNFS, > but people should be willing to do basic 4.0 testing too. As this isn't an official RH project, I would probably have to pay my own way, which makes it doubtful :) Plus, surely in this day and age, we can figure out something better than waiting for face-to-face events to test something. Maybe somebody could arrange a donation of some slice of a grid (Amazon EC2?), make various OS images available, and give engineers some way to request a selection of tests, with a selection of OS images? > Glad to hear you're still working on this--it sounds interesting. Certainly pNFS parallels some of the work I want to do... NFSv4.1 is so darned complex though. I am torn as to whether or not I want to take my server down that path. I really wish the entire wire protocol were scrapped and replaced with something more sane, and easier to parse. The variable-length structures passed to PCI hardware these days [as seen in the kernel drivers I hack on, IOW] are just as compact, if not more so, but are designed to be parsed quickly in large chunks, rather than the "next XDR may be your last!" approach :) Sessions are IMO a tad overdone, too... largely due to necessities forced upon NFSv4.1 by the legacy RPC protocol assumptions. If you simply /assume/ basic properties of TCP or SCTP, it's a lot easier to do multi-channel or multi-homed messaging. Multi-channel _isn't_ really that hard, and we've been doing it since the earliest days of NNTP and the Usenet Top 1000 pissing contest, if not longer. It's tempting to see what would arise from a clean-slate wire protocol effort, something that is otherwise compatible with NFS 4.x operations, objects, and data model. Jeff