Subject: [nfsv4] [NFSv4.2] Meeting notes for 06/29/2011

From: Thomas Haynes <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2011 16:08:37 -0500

Attendees:

Tom Haynes (NetApp)
James Lentini (NetApp)
Fred Isaman (NetApp)
Peter Staubach (EMC)
Dean Hildebrand (IBM)
Dave Noveck (EMC)
Trond Myklebust (NetApp)
Chuck Lever (Oracle)
Spencer Shepler (Microsoft)

+ IETF Note Well Agreement

   http://www.ietf.org/NOTEWELL.html

+ fadvise overview

A key point was that the draft Dean was a co-author on was concerned
with Posix standards and the Enterprise Apps one was concerned with non-Posix
experience gathered from embedded NFS clients. We understand the
Posix concerns better than the non-Posix.

Someone made the observation that for the Enterprise Apps draft, a
return code means that the server will do the action. There was much
disagreement with this statement. It was decided that the return
was still a status on the hint and not a promise. Further, the Enterprise
Apps return allows the server to inform the client that another
hint is already in effect because of another client.

Speaking of key points, Trond made the observation that Posix
implementations of fadivse control things in the incore
representation of the file. Thus, any contention from two or more
processes are resolved through it. With a NFS server, we need
a way to inform a client that another policy is in place.

On the broader question of whether we needed to return any
information, Spencer pointed out that such information would
be very beneficial to analysts trying to figure out why a server
was not optimizing access along the lines of the hint.

Spencer also made the recommendation for an IANA registry to
allow changes outside of minor releases. An implication here
is that we might want to return not supported for some hints.

+ Locker problem

Trond asked: Is the seqid associated with the lock owner or the lock stateid.

The consensus was that everyone's understanding was the lock owner.

Dave has submitted some text on the list for changes for 3530bis.
He will also see if an associated issue will mandate an errata for 5661.