[announce] Autofs NG 0.1

[Mike Waychison <Michael.Waychison@Sun.COM>]

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Hi folks,

Some of you may remember my posting of a new way to do autofs in Linux a
while back:

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=107341940326348&w=2

Anyhow,  I've gotten to the point where I have code that people can play
with.  I've posted it all at http://autofsng.bkbits.net

There are two repos located there, one is the userspace bits (autofsng).
~ It has the 'utility' (automount) and the autofs usermode agent
(autofs).  This tree began as a automount 3.1.7 tree, but has
drastically changed.  Lots of good stuff has yet to be merged in from
the automount 4 daemon.

The kernel bits are in the linux-2.6-autofsng repository.   Broken out
patches are forthcoming in the next (weeks?) [*].  It has the following
major changes to it:

- - changes to the vfsmount tree structures so that you can detach and
re-attach sub-trees of the vfsmount tree.  The current implementation is
admittedly a bit gross and will require work to make it pretty (and to
get rid of having to grab a rwlock on every mntget/mntput!).

- - the addition of a mountpoint file descriptor api.  I don't care for
the interface at the moment, and I'll be posting interface descriptions
later on along with broken out patches so that the interface itself can
be thought through.

- - vfs native support for expiring mountpoints (and entire subtrees of
them).  There currently exists a syscall entry to specify this from
userspace as a way to easily test it.  As well, you can specify expiry
information using the above mountpoint file descriptor api.

- - a new module implementing the 'autofs' filesystem called autofsng.
This filesystem will support automounting of both direct and indirect
maps.  It also supports 'browsing'.  Most of this magic happens using
'->follow_link' walks on directory inodes.   This is ugly, but it
appears to be the best way to properly handle automounting from within
the kernel.

There does remain a good amount of work to do, and I've tried to list
things on the top of my head in the autofsng/autofs/TODO file.  I'm sure
I missed stuff :\

At this point, I can run and pass a ported autofs connectathon
testsuite.  I'm working on figuring out how to get the testsuite
included in the package.  For comparison,  both autofs3 and autofs4
couldn't handle the majority (>%95) of the tests done.  As well, we've
uncovered a couple of nfs related issues that we'll be following up with
on the nfs list.

So, if you have time to spare and you care about automounting, please
have a try at using it.  If you are curious enough to wade through it,
feel free to give feedback/flames/comments on the code/design/weather.

Thanks,

[*] - I know it is bad practice to pop-up out of nowhere with large
changes, but I wasn't able to get anything out much earlier due to a
variety of reasons.  From now on, expect to see much traffic from me as
I feed a broken-out patchsets to the list.

- --
Mike Waychison
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
1 (650) 352-5299 voice
1 (416) 202-8336 voice

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NOTICE:  The opinions expressed in this email are held by me,
and may not represent the views of Sun Microsystems, Inc.
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