Re: [9fans] Do we have a catalog of 9P servers?

["Fco. J. Ballesteros" <nemo@lsub.org>]

For this we use local Infernos at machines serving resources,
using a dav server to provide the built name space to the native host systems.
Not for devices, but works for most other things.
Devices can be done by adapting their interfaces via wrapper FSs.

>
>  Ok, here's a stab at describing my requirement: imagine a situation
>  where you need to make access to a large variety of existing external
>  resources (and I really do mean *variety*) be:
>   1. transparent to the users
>   2. independent of the user's environment
>   3. independent of the location of the users
>   4. independent of the user's ability to *explicitly* do networking
>
>  Most of these existing external resources are already shared using
>  protocols quite different from 9P. Worse yet, the servers serving
>  them are not under our control. Thus making them speak 9P at the
>  end point of a server is not an option.
>
>  Now, at this point, one might wonder why not use FUSE and import these
>  resources directly at the client end-point? The answer is quite simple:
>  because of MS Windows (#2) and because of the potential inability
>  to dial out (#4) on demand.
>
>  Thanks,
>  Roman.
>
>  P.S. On a similar note I'd like to add that the requirement outlined
>  above seem to be quite typical in today's world. See, on one hand new
>  kind of resources (take flickr or youtube as an example) are very
>  unlikely to be shared using 9P, unless WE can argue that 9P is somehow
>  radically better (saves bandwidth, etc.) for the resource *maintainer*.
>  Not an impossible thing to articulate (as some of the responses I've
>  got to my earlier question indicated -- thank you guys!) but a difficult
>  one. Why? Well, because the next question you get from the maintainers
>  is: who can import our resources using 9P on the client side?
>
>  I wish 9p:// URL worked out of the box in Firefox, but it doesn't. It is
>  also not supported by JDK & C#. And even we we stick with the "resources
>  as regular files" approach on the client you're stuck with mostly POSIX
>  environment + locking (+caching). POSIX means symlink(2) and mknod(2)
>  (and locking/caching means a lot of pain and mental masturbation).
>  Last time I checked, we didn't have consensus on how things like these
>  are supposed to be handled by 9P.
>
>  And finally -- it is ok to say: "they are not supposed to". If that's
>  our collective answer, that also answers my earlier question -- 9P as
>  it stands is useless in a situation like I'm in.
>