Subject: Re: [nfsv4] Issue46 - extend fs_location_info to support arbitrary string-based attributes

From: Jim Rees <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 11:06:13 -0400

It works well for me.

  Basically it boils down to: how and why should a filesystem be deciding
  which binaries you are capable of running? Why can't you put that
  intelligence elsewhere?

I agree with you here, and I'm not going to argue strongly in favor of
providing this mechanism in the file system.  I will argue against putting
it in fs_locations.

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From: Jim Rees <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 14:58:55 -0400

Maybe an example would help?  Here is my home directory:

% ls -l
total 82
lrwxr-xr-x   1 rees  wheel     8 May 22  1990 bin -> @sys/bin
% ls i386_linux26
bin l
% ls i386_linux26/bin
ls    sntp  twm   xterm

It would be silly to make i386_linux26/bin be a separate file system.  As a
user I want to be able to create such directories without talking to an
admin.  I might even want the symlink to point to a single file rather than
a directory.  It's nice that I can create the symlink with "ln" rather than
with some special tool, and query it with "ls" rather than some other
special tool.

This functionality really belongs in the OS's name resolver, not in the file
system.  But given that it's not in the OS, the afs file system client is
the next best place.  On the server is the worst place.

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From: Jim Rees <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 16:55:47 -0400

A universal namespace, to me, means that every file system object has one
true name, and if you use that name anywhere, you will always get the same
object.  The object may have other names too, but you can always discover
the true name.  And there may be some names that will go different places
depending on where you are coming from, but those are not true names.

It's also possible to have multiple true names, but that leads to loops in
the name space.

Nico, I don't understand what you are proposing.  I am objecting to Mike's
proposal, not yours.

It seems to me Mike is objecting to the symlinks, not necessarily to the
universal name space.  Is that right?  So maybe /usr/local/mysql/lib has a
true name, you just can't use pwd to figure out what it is?  How do you
figure it out, with the mount command?