From kde-devel  Mon Nov 29 17:46:28 1999
From: Nicolas Brodu <brodun () aston ! ac ! uk>
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 17:46:28 +0000
To: kde-devel
Subject: Re: samba and NFS support (was: Re: from Corel: may we help?)
X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-devel&m=94389761127957

aleXXX wrote:
> > Well, you could have a separate bookkeeping app that does the mounting
> > following requests by the kio_nfs.
> > It could also dismount the NFS shares once they are idle for a while.
> > Sort of an automounter.

Hmm, what exactly are the means for mounting nfs and smb on different system
(not only Linux). Is nfs mount always available with user privileges?
We can cope with not mounting for smb, but what about nfs?
 
> Yes, that's the way I do it at the moment and over the weekend I had some time
> to have a look at the ioslave-stuff.
> As I see everthing is read/created/... on the fly.
> We could do it for the samba stuff the same way, but IMHO it would be better to
> have something like a server/lib/automount-app which is called by the
> smb/NFS-ioslave.

As David pointed, the automounter approach doesn't fit well with the IOSlave
design. On the other hand, as you say below, mounting enables a redirection to
the 'file' slave.

> (something like:
[snip]
> and returns the list of shares (takes some time)

That's already the current approach for smb. It would be nice if nfs worked
the same way.

> konqy: enter dir share1
> -> ioslave.get("LAN://workgroup1/host1/share1")
> -> ioslave: server.get("/workgroup1/host1/share1")
> -> server:  if (/workgroup1/hsot1/share1.mountable() &&
> /workgroup1/host1/share1.notmounted() ) then mount and redirect to the
> file-ioslave
> if ...mountable() && ...mounted() redirect to the file ioslave
> else not mountable: scan the share for contents, don't store them

How do you do this for nfs?

> (takes too much space, I think) and return them
> again the password and other workgroup-depending options are needed
> (takes some time)

> short after, another konqy:
[snip]
> (saves again up to 20 seconds for a dir change)

There is a cache in the smb lib that does this theorically. What's needed is to
put the kio_smb in David's 'freezer'.

> konqy: enter dir share1
> ->ioslave.get("LAN://workgroup1/host1/share1")
> ->ioslave: server.get("/workgroup1/host1/share1")
> ->server: detects that share1.isMounted() and redirects to the file-ioslave
> (again saves time for a dir change)
> 
> This way it is also possible to achieve complete
> samba-nfs-novell-whatever-transparency, I created a baseclass Share, and
> derived classes SambaShare, NFSExport, NovellVolume which represent the
> detected type. Additionally it is often required to have some informations
> about the workgroup/host a share belongs to to do something (mount or client)
> with it.

Nice!
I think our approaches of the  problem are not incompatible. You could 
benefit from code that gives you back, for example, the workgroup lists or 
the exported shares on a particular server directly, without external calls.
And if you're not actually mounting the share, direct smb transaction with
the server enables you to download the data chunck by chunk, as the kioslaves
presently work.
If you wish, I can introduce some of those features in the classes you 
mention above (just mail them to me and allow some time...).

Cheers,
Nicolas

-- 
Life is a sexually transmitted fatal disease. (W. Allen?)