Re: writing a ceph cliente for MS windows

[Alphe Salas Michels <asalas@kepler.cl>]

Hello sage,
I followed your lead and went a bit further in my source code reading 
and I notice serveral problems:
first most of the id use in ceph osd_clients, mds_clients, mon_client 
use the data type u64 which will be a problem
as most of the windows in use are windows XP or Windows server 2003 in 
32 bits. As they are used for id tag for
things like snapshot pages (if I understand well) that can be a problem 
for a port no?

What I read so far was
mount.ceph files > kernel/fs/ceph files which contains the mds_client 
files and the kernel ioctl interface ... >  include / linux / ceph  
files which integrates libcephfs.h. and all the needed files

there is three clients, there is auth.h a messenger, a msgpool, buffer, 
rados that depends on msgr that include in every aspect of the messages 
formation  one or more __le64 message.

I m far from understanding the whole code and the interactions betwin 
all the files and which we can skip and which we can keep.

how can we translate those data type into 32bit in order for ceph 
cluster to understand them and ceph-windows-client to transmit them?

Regards

signature

*Alphé Salas*
Ingeniero T.I

asalas@kepler.cl




On 11/05/13 14:40, Alphe Salas Michels wrote:
>
> signature *Hi, Sage !
> thank you for you enthousiast reply.
> I sure want to make the best use of everything or anything previously 
> done to tend to
> write ceph cliente for windows.
>
> Apart using libre tools for building the future ceph cliente I am open 
> to anything.
> I would recommand eclipse CDT or Code::BLocks they are based on 
> mingwin open and easyly enhanceable.**
>
> more free tools can be found here:
> http://www.freebyte.com/programming/cpp/#cppcompilers
>
>
> I will read libcephfs source code and take some notes about the protocol.
> I was more going from what I know and trying to track down how 
> mount.ceph work with the parameters passed to it.
> since it point finally to Kernel/fs/ceph and that I don t really 
> understand how that module work and that it probably points to some 
> other dependencies Reading libcephfs source code could be a big gain 
> of time.
>
> basically on the protocol what is  need are:
>
> 1) open and maintain a connection (socket open, auth, etc )
> 2) retreive a map of directories and disk Quota (disk sizing Y TB 
> free,  Z TB total)
> 3) procedure to send files / directories in a maner that it will allow 
> our client to fit ceph transmission protocols
> (limit bandwith for stability?, limit connection amount?, limit cpu 
> use?, Cache for preparing data transfer (a FIFO cache)?)
> 4)Procedure to retreive files / directory from ceph cluster
> 5) Management copy/move files /Directories, FS stats, Connection 
> Stats. logging.
>
> My idea to progress is to take those main bulletpoint in ceph protocol 
> based on general ideas of what ceph file system does and start 
> identifying parts from libcephfs to match those "needs".
>
> Any suggestion and contributions are welcome.
>
>
> *
> On 11/05/13 11:23, Sage Weil wrote:
>> Hi Alphe,
>>
>> On Mon, 4 Nov 2013, Alphe Salas Michels wrote:
>>> Good day developers!
>>>
>>> I would like to propose to the one interested  work with me to 
>>> develop a ceph
>>> cliente for MS windows world, Basing us on dokanFS.
>>>
>>> My company is a ceph enthousiast that use on a dayly basis ceph and 
>>> that need
>>> both transfer speed and big expendable and cheap storage.
>>> My company is specialised in data recovery and we want to 
>>> participate to ceph
>>> effort by bringing a ceph cliente for windows.
>> Awesome!
>>
>>> Our experience shows us that the best gateway is each clientes being 
>>> its own
>>> gateway, instead of having a bottle neck server or a cluster of 
>>> bottle neck
>>> servers as gateway (FTP, samba, SFTP,webdav, s3, etc..).
>>>
>>> We already did some research in that domain.
>>>
>>> Dokan FS is an intent  to write an opensource fuse like cliente for MS
>>> windows.
>>>
>>> More information on DOKANFS can be triggered here
>>> http://dokan-dev.net/en/download/
>>>
>>> Positive points of using DOKANFS.
>>>
>>> - its opensourced and well licenced mit licence, gpl licence and 
>>> lgpl licence.
>>>
>>> Negative point of using DOKAN FS.
>>> - unreachable author
>>> - Poor documentation . Dev comments in japanese.
>>> - Work in progress so it is unstable and needs to be updated, 
>>> debugged and
>>> maintained by a MS Windows file system expert developper.
>> I am not very familiar with windows storage APIs, but somebody told me
>> at once point there were several interfaces against which a new file
>> system could be implemented, everything from a full in-kernel driver to
>> something that is explorer-based.  Are any of those suitable? Using a
>> potentially abandoned fuse-like layer makes me a bit nervous.
>>
>> That said,
>>> I try past year to do a merge from ceph-fuse to dokanfs
>>> here are what I learnt.
>>> - Ceph-fuse and related source code is around 60 000 lines of code.
>>> - Ceph protocol isn t documented so it is like trying to draw a map 
>>> of america
>>> using only a sextan and a compass.
>>>
>>> Those led me to those conclusions:
>>> - I can t do it alone.
>>> - It is easier to draw down the ceph protocol way to work from 
>>> kernel/fs/ceph
>>> sources and mount.ceph
>>> - Ceph depending libraries may be unexistant or not up to date in 
>>> their port
>>> on MS Windows (cygwin)
>> I think the most sane path should be to make libcephfs sufficiently
>> portable to build on windows (or cygwin).  For the bits used by the
>> client-side coe, I don't think there should be much in the way of
>> dependencies, and the main challenge would be untangling the build for
>> the necessary pieces out from the rest of Ceph.
>>
>> Have you seen the wip-port portability work that is currently 
>> underway by
>> Noah and Alan?  That may solve many of the cygwin problems you are 
>> seeing
>> today.
>>
>>> - MS file system specialist are hard do find in the "open source 
>>> libre world"
>>> so I will try in the commercial world.
>>>
>>> The commercial world has some problems too. They need ceph protocol 
>>> draft to
>>> implemente it to their own product They will have licencing /commercial
>>> politics that infringe lgpl, and hide that most of the work is done 
>>> by people
>>> other than them. They will not participate in a financial way to ceph
>>> enhancement and growth.
>> I don't think reimplementing the client code is an efficient way 
>> forward.
>> Unless the goal is a pure kernel implementation...but a significant
>> ongoing investment in development resources would be needed for that 
>> going
>> forward.  I suspect that is a challenge for a platform that does not
>> typically rally that sort of community effort.
>>
>> The easiest thing is of course just to use CIFS and Samba (which works
>> today).  A fuse-like approach is probably a reasonably middle ground 
>> (both
>> in initial effort and maintainability going forward)...
>>
>> sage
>>
>>
>
>

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