indexed directories and the File Server

[beto@ncube.com beto@ncube.com]

In <199707102115.QAA06074@ns.dbSystems.com>
 "G. David Butler" <gdb@dbSystems.com> wrote:

> I would also like to start a concurrent discussion about the File
> Server.  When I first started with Plan9, I thought having two
> different kernels was weird.  Now I think the idea is sound since
> they have such different roles.

I also like the idea of different kernels, there are so many oportunities
for optimizations. The main problem is how to keep drivers in
both places in sync. It would be nice if the file server could reuse
drivers from the term/cpu kernel. For example,our bootstrap
program (9b.n3) reuses most of the drivers from 9. The same should be
possible with fs.

>So the next question, do we put the
> above functionality into kfs and make the cpu kernel and kfs able
> to handle file services efficiently or do we keep the current
> File Server?  (If we keep the File Server, we need to add an il
> version of a port 23 server to provide access to the console.  In
> fact, that is a good idea for the cpu server too.  TCP is missing
> in the File Server, as it should.)
>
I think the fact that the file system does not talk TCP/23 in on
purpose, you don't want people connection to it in that way.
Have a look to consolefs.

A better replacement for kfs as a local file system is to transform
it into a driver (devnvfs, this name is taken from inferno). I like this
idea because then the same process could copy the data directly
from the cache into user land. I've started doing something like this a
couple of months ago, but haven't done much since.

I need longer lunch breaks :-).