Subject: Minutes from nfsv4 WG meeting @ 50th IETF (Minneapolis)

From: Brent <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 11:55:49 -0800

NFSv4 Working Group Meeting @ 50th IETF, Minneapolis
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        Reported by Brent Callaghan

After welcoming the participants and presenting the meeting
agenda, Brent Callaghan gave a short presentation on the status
of the RPC standards it inherited from the ONCRPC working
group.  Currently, RFC 1832 (XDR) is at Draft and RFC's 1831
(RPC), 1833 (Binding) and 2203 (RPCSEC_GSS) are all at Proposed.
It seems there are no issues that prevent XDR from being
advanced to Internet Standard. RFC's 1831 and 1832 require the
addition of an "IANA Considerations" (RFC 2434) section for
administration of the program number space.  RFC 2203
(RPCSEC_GSS) has demonstrated interoperability but cannot
advance until the GSS-API RFC's are advanced.  Area Director,
Allison Mankin, said she would try to expedite the movement of
those RFCs.

Document editor, Spencer Shepler, is preparing to make updates
to the NFSv4 protocol spec, RFC 3010. The updates comprise
semantic clarifications and minor RPC changes that arose from
testing at the October bakeoff and Connectathon 2001. He
presented a list of the changes under consideration and
asked for a list cutoff of May 1st.

        Clarifications:
                Response count for COMPOUND
                Lease and deadlocks
                CREATE/MKDIR/OPEN errors
                Issues with locking length of all ones
                Byte ranges with 32-bit systems
                Delegation recall at RENAME
                Initial sequence id
                Overlapping and other weird byte ranges
                SETATTR response attribute mask
                OPEN upgrade and share conflicts
                Stateid returned on CLOSE
                Only one outstanding sequid-containing
                  request at a time
                Unlimited-length opaques
                Get a seqid using OPEN
        RPC description changes
                Multi-component pathname issues
                Server references delegations by FH, not stateid
                Remove tag from compound request/response
                OPEN and CREATE returning bitmap of attributes
        Other issues
                Attributes needed on create
                NT server issues with OPEN upgrade
                Lease/stateid/sequence-id

Issues that arise from these updates will be tackled one at a
time on the mailing list. Work on the "NFSv4 Implementation"
Internet-Draft is pending completion of the updates to RFC 3010.
Sandeep Joshi asked about the error returned to an application
when a lock is lost, e.g. if the lease expires.  David Robinson
mentioned that some UNIX systems have a SIGLOST signal.
Allison asked whether the I18N section of the spec would
be reviewed.  Spencer said he'd look into it.

Venkat Rangan discussed his proposal for an NFSv4 MIB.
The current draft (draft-rangan-nfsv4-mib-00.txt) provides
some counters for NFSv4 protocol operations and errors. It
describes three objects: the server, filesystems and locks.
Feedback from the mailing list indicated an interest in
extending the MIB to cover NFS versions 2 and 3 for both
client and server.  It was suggested that the RPC layer
would be best handled as a separate MIB. There was also
interest in determining protocol transaction time and  usage
history. Venkat will include a new object model in the
next draft as well as conformance statements.

Mark Wittle expanded on a proposal for minor version features
that he posted to the mailing list earlier in the week.
He said the context for these proposals was the "in room"
network, where NFS is the primary means for application
servers to access storage.  He would like to see some of the
features available to "local" filesystems be accessible through
NFS.  These include atomic appends to a file, List I/O,
Madvise-like hints for Cache Control and  Persistent Locks.
He suggested that "exactly once" semantics would simplify
the protocol. Although app developers currently use lock files,
h recommended explicit support in the protocol for persistent
locks. On caching control, he indicated that many operating
systems already support caching assertions.

Brian Pawlowski then took the floor to explain his
proposal to re-charter the working group. The major
work item of the original charter, development of the
v4 protocol, is now winding down.  The working group is
encountering follow-on activities that require the
re-charter: minor version proposals, MIB work, and replication
and migration support. Brian conducted a loose poll on these
items.  There was much enthusiasm for an NFS MIB, but lukewarm
support for minor version features.  Ran Atkinson voiced concern
at the level of complexity in NFSv4 and the additional complexity
of minor versions. He is worried about the "micro-optimizations"
proposed for the minor version, what bugs they will introduce
and how well the extensions will work over a wide-area network.
He suggested that some of the minor version proposals would
be more appropriate for a separate protocol that deals with
distributed databases. On Replication and Migration, Brent
proposed that it work for NFS versions 2 and 3 as well.
Another suggestion from the floor was that the NDMP protocol
might provide provide a framework for Replication and Migration.
Brian said he'd consider it.

The meeting concluded at 5:10pm.

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The slides from the meeting can be viewed at:

   http://playground.sun.com/pub/nfsv4/presentations/ietf50

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