Re: [9fans] FreeBSD 9p work

[nigel@9fs.org]

> The former requires writing a kernel fs.  The latter requires choosing
> a protocol used by one of existing kernel filesystems and translating
> between it and 9P.  AFAICS that will be messy for all such protocols -
> none of them matches 9P well enough.

I entirely agree with this. The main userland filesystem in FreeBSD
is (I think) a compression filesystem. It works by interpreting NFS
protocol.

This is too awful to contemplate, so a VFS is the only clear way ahead.

Unfortunately, the existing implementation bears little relationship
to current FreeBSD vfs interfaces, and has other limitations which
suggest starting over is the only option.

And that's where I stop. There is no documentation for the vfs/vnode
interface. The code is not much help, and the only book on the
subject is sufficiently out of date that it would not be much help either.

I'd rather push at a door with stiff hinges, than one that's nailed shut,
so I never quite get desperate enough to do the work.

You can't help thinking "now if this kernel had a nice simple file
protocol I could transcode into 9p it would be easy" and then you
realise the only nice simple file protocol IS 9p.