[9fans] FUSE on Plan9

[9fans] FUSE on Plan9

[Jens Staal]

This might not be popular among most Plan9 users, but I started thinking about
the possibility of FUSE on Plan9 after seeing the FUSE on WebDAV [1] project.
At least on 9front, WebDAV should be integrated in webfs.

Would this theoretically work? The advantage of FUSE is access to a number of
popular file systems (most notably ext4, NTFS, ZFS) and also many special-
purpose file systems.

It feels a bit round-about and wasteful to go via webfs, so I guess the most
appropriate method would be to implement a FUSE library directly on top of 9P
instead of the kernel VFS - possibly by porting the NetBSD
librefuse/libperfused [2] or the OpenBSD libfuse [3]. The disadvantage with
this approach is that I am far too inexperienced and have far too little time
to actually attempt this.

What are your thoughts? Should I try to get the fuse-on-webdav working on
Plan9? Any other attempts with a more proper port/implementation already
ongoing?

1. https://github.com/rianhunter/davfuse
2. http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?perfused+8+NetBSD-6.0
3. http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20131108082749

Re: [9fans] FUSE on Plan9

[Anthony Sorace]

On Dec 12, 2014, at 05:49, Jens Staal <staal1978@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Would this theoretically work? The advantage of FUSE is access to a number of 
> popular file systems (most notably ext4, NTFS, ZFS) and also many special-
> purpose file systems.

It's been a few years since I really looked at fuse, so I could be misremembering things, but wouldn't you then have the port the individual plugs into each system anyway? Fuse gives you an interconnect, but not all of that functionality automatically. It's narrower then NDIS, which is nice, but I don't know how much it's going to buy you on its own.

Re: [9fans] FUSE on Plan9

[Anthony Sorace]

What might be more interesting is a 9pfuse, analogous to davfuse (thus the opposite of the thing in p9p now), running on Unix. That way you have a high probability of working with the existing fuse plugs, without having to do any porting work there, and plan 9 systems can still get at them. It's not quite as convenient as having it natively on plan 9, but could produce really good bang for your buck.


> On Dec 12, 2014, at 05:49, Jens Staal <staal1978@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> This might not be popular among most Plan9 users, but I started thinking about 
> the possibility of FUSE on Plan9 after seeing the FUSE on WebDAV [1] project.
> At least on 9front, WebDAV should be integrated in webfs.
> 
> Would this theoretically work? The advantage of FUSE is access to a number of 
> popular file systems (most notably ext4, NTFS, ZFS) and also many special-
> purpose file systems. 
> 
> It feels a bit round-about and wasteful to go via webfs, so I guess the most 
> appropriate method would be to implement a FUSE library directly on top of 9P 
> instead of the kernel VFS - possibly by porting the NetBSD 
> librefuse/libperfused [2] or the OpenBSD libfuse [3]. The disadvantage with 
> this approach is that I am far too inexperienced and have far too little time 
> to actually attempt this.
> 
> What are your thoughts? Should I try to get the fuse-on-webdav working on 
> Plan9? Any other attempts with a more proper port/implementation already 
> ongoing?
> 
> 1. https://github.com/rianhunter/davfuse
> 2. http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?perfused+8+NetBSD-6.0
> 3. http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20131108082749
> 

Re: [9fans] FUSE on Plan9

[Skip Tavakkolian]

Drawterm exports local fs (ntfs, ext, etc.) to plan 9; you could make an exportfs only version.

Russ did 9pfuse several years ago; allows fuse fs access to Plan 9 file server. iirc worked with Linux and Mac OS X. 


> On Dec 12, 2014, at 2:49 AM, Jens Staal <staal1978@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> This might not be popular among most Plan9 users, but I started thinking about 
> the possibility of FUSE on Plan9 after seeing the FUSE on WebDAV [1] project.
> At least on 9front, WebDAV should be integrated in webfs.
> 
> Would this theoretically work? The advantage of FUSE is access to a number of 
> popular file systems (most notably ext4, NTFS, ZFS) and also many special-
> purpose file systems. 
> 
> It feels a bit round-about and wasteful to go via webfs, so I guess the most 
> appropriate method would be to implement a FUSE library directly on top of 9P 
> instead of the kernel VFS - possibly by porting the NetBSD 
> librefuse/libperfused [2] or the OpenBSD libfuse [3]. The disadvantage with 
> this approach is that I am far too inexperienced and have far too little time 
> to actually attempt this.
> 
> What are your thoughts? Should I try to get the fuse-on-webdav working on 
> Plan9? Any other attempts with a more proper port/implementation already 
> ongoing?
> 
> 1. https://github.com/rianhunter/davfuse
> 2. http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?perfused+8+NetBSD-6.0
> 3. http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20131108082749
> 
> 

Re: [9fans] FUSE on Plan9

[cinap_lenrek]

steve quintile wrote a webdav filesystem (that uses webfs).

see /n/sources/contrib/steve/wdfs.tbz

i dont see why webdav should be integrated in webfs. webfs
is plan9's low-level http library.

--
cinap

Re: [9fans] FUSE on Plan9

[Jens Staal]

On Friday 12 December 2014 17:36:52 cinap_lenrek@felloff.net wrote:
> steve quintile wrote a webdav filesystem (that uses webfs).
>
> see /n/sources/contrib/steve/wdfs.tbz
>
> i dont see why webdav should be integrated in webfs. webfs
> is plan9's low-level http library.

OK then I just mis-understood something I read as a striked-out action point
on a 9front todo-list.

I will definitely look at that webdav fs. I will see if I try something with
the davfuse - at least as a learning experience. I do however expect progress
to be slow.

If I can access some files put in some NTFS and ext4 test-images directly from
Plan9 that would be cool...

Re: [9fans] FUSE on Plan9

[cinap_lenrek]

why do you insist on fuse? it looks really complicated and linux specific
to me. the work of reimplementing linux in plan9 with symlinks, ioctls,
select might be far more complicated than just porting ntfs driver to a lib9p
fileserver without reimplementing a linux emulation environment to run
fuse programs.

--
cinap

Re: [9fans] FUSE on Plan9

[Quintile]

there is a WebDAV client in my contribution adds, which sits on top of webfs.

steve





> On 12 Dec 2014, at 10:49, Jens Staal <staal1978@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> This might not be popular among most Plan9 users, but I started thinking about 
> the possibility of FUSE on Plan9 after seeing the FUSE on WebDAV [1] project.
> At least on 9front, WebDAV should be integrated in webfs.
> 
> Would this theoretically work? The advantage of FUSE is access to a number of 
> popular file systems (most notably ext4, NTFS, ZFS) and also many special-
> purpose file systems. 
> 
> It feels a bit round-about and wasteful to go via webfs, so I guess the most 
> appropriate method would be to implement a FUSE library directly on top of 9P 
> instead of the kernel VFS - possibly by porting the NetBSD 
> librefuse/libperfused [2] or the OpenBSD libfuse [3]. The disadvantage with 
> this approach is that I am far too inexperienced and have far too little time 
> to actually attempt this.
> 
> What are your thoughts? Should I try to get the fuse-on-webdav working on 
> Plan9? Any other attempts with a more proper port/implementation already 
> ongoing?
> 
> 1. https://github.com/rianhunter/davfuse
> 2. http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?perfused+8+NetBSD-6.0
> 3. http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20131108082749
>