[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread] 

List:       linux-cifs-client
Subject:    Re: [linux-cifs-client] Re: New maintainer needed for the Linux smb
From:       Steven French <sfrench () us ! ibm ! com>
Date:       2005-08-24 15:32:26
Message-ID: OFEE719805.F2028EDF-ON87257067.00537A4D-86257067.0055677B () us ! ibm ! com
[Download RAW message or body]

[Attachment #2 (multipart/related)]

[Attachment #4 (multipart/alternative)]


My opinion is that a maintainer for smbfs should not be a high priority,
but any hot smb bugs (e.g. oops or hang in kernel) among the bugs listed in
samba or kernel bugzillas could be analyzed/fixed as people have time or
interest, and I would be happy to review them.

My reasoning why smbfs is becoming a lower priority:
1) There are only two remaining smbfs capabilities which cifs does not have
equivalent support for and these are coming soon:
      a) CIFS will have some Windows ME support within a week (Windows 95,
Windows 98 will also likely work
      but I have not tested them - I will need help from those that still
have older boxes or vmware images)
      b) Kerberos support - CIFS will have Kerberos/SPNEGO support (via
upcall to ntlm_auth) by the 4th quarter.
2) cifs is more functional, more posix compliant in most or all cases, and
much better supports newer Samba and Windows servers (its initial target)
3) We do not have enough filesystem or Samba developers (especially with
Samba 3 maitaining and Samba 4 new development going on at the same time)
to afford to split the testing and development work for the kernel piece
much
4) We are working on formalizing the documentation for the "CIFS POSIX
Extensions" (with the help of Jeremy Allison and others, and feedback from
others outside the Samba team as well) which have been implemented in cifs
(smbfs partially implemented the older Unix extensions).

We (Samba team and kernel filesystem community) do need help though...

I would be glad to help anyone get started with working on GUIs, new tools,
new loosely related kernel libraries, or items off the cifs vfs list.   We
have a couple people working cifs items at the moment (that I know of -
DNOTIFY support through the summer of code, and another doing
cifs_writepages work), and there have been others (I would love to James
Roper rework his promising cifs async readpages readahead code).

1) A maintainer would need some system programming experience (e.g. kernel
or device driver work or willingness to dive in and learn e.g. from the
O'Reilly Device Driver book), and prove themselves by demonstrating some
accepted kernel patches.
2) Initial few months of their patches for the subsystem should be
carefully reviewed (for smbfs by me or the old maintainer and it would not
hurt to have linux-fsdevel and samba-technical reviews)

The easiest path might be to take an item from the TODO list of one of the
filesystems and implement it, carving a recognized area that can standalone
to some extent (so patches collide less often with other work).

For Samba kernel work there is an obvious need to extend (or perhaps
reimplement something similar) Tim Potter's Samba LSM module for example,
and the cifs vfs has about 10 items on the todo list.      Across multiple
filesystems is one of the more interesting problems. - ACL mapping (NFSv4
to CIFS, CIFS to NFSv4, POSIX to CIFS, NFSv4 to POSIX, CIFS to unix mode,
unix mode bits to NFSv4 etc.) - an obvious case for a library in kernel.
Another hot recent area is credential caching/management in kernel for cifs
and nfsv4 (and ecryptfs etc.) for which a new mailing list was just setup
by Trond (hosted on the linux-nfs server).


Steve French
Senior Software Engineer
Linux Technology Center - IBM Austin
phone: 512-838-2294
email: sfrench at-sign us dot ibm dot com


                                                                       
             Hal Wigoda                                                
             <hwigoda@mindspri                                         
             ng.com>                                                    To
             Sent by:                  linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,   
             linux-cifs-client         samba-technical@lists.samba.org,
             -bounces+sfrench=         linux-cifs-client@lists.samba.org
             us.ibm.com@lists.                                          cc
             samba.org                                                 
                                                                   Subject
                                       [linux-cifs-client] Re: New     
             08/23/2005 11:19          maintainer needed for the Linux smb
             PM                        filesystem                      
                                                                       
                                                                       
                                                                       
                                                                       
                                                                       
                                                                       




is a maintainer still needed?
and if so, what are the qualifications?
hal wigoda
chicago
_______________________________________________
linux-cifs-client mailing list
linux-cifs-client@lists.samba.org
https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-cifs-client

[Attachment #7 (text/html)]

<html><body>
<p>My opinion is that a maintainer for smbfs should not be a high priority, but any \
hot smb bugs (e.g. oops or hang in kernel) among the bugs listed in samba or kernel \
bugzillas could be analyzed/fixed as people have time or interest, and I would be \
happy to review them.   <br> <br>
My reasoning why smbfs is becoming a lower priority:<br>
1) There are only two remaining smbfs capabilities which cifs does not have \
equivalent support for and these are coming soon:<br>  a) CIFS will have some Windows \
ME support within a week (Windows 95, Windows 98 will also likely work<br>  but I \
have not tested them - I will need help from those that still have older boxes or \
vmware images)<br>  b) Kerberos support - CIFS will have Kerberos/SPNEGO support (via \
upcall to ntlm_auth) by the 4th quarter.<br> 2) cifs is more functional, more posix \
compliant in most or all cases, and much better supports newer Samba and Windows \
servers (its initial target)<br> 3) We do not have enough filesystem or Samba \
developers (especially with Samba 3 maitaining and Samba 4 new development going on \
at the same time) to afford to split the testing and development work for the kernel \
piece much<br> 4) We are working on formalizing the documentation for the &quot;CIFS \
POSIX Extensions&quot; (with the help of Jeremy Allison and others, and feedback from \
others outside the Samba team as well) which have been implemented in cifs (smbfs \
partially implemented the older Unix extensions).<br> <br>
We (Samba team and kernel filesystem community) do need help though...<br>
<br>
I would be glad to help anyone get started with working on GUIs, new tools, new \
loosely related kernel libraries, or items off the cifs vfs list.   We have a couple \
people working cifs items at the moment (that I know of - DNOTIFY support through the \
summer of code, and another doing cifs_writepages work), and there have been others \
(I would love to James Roper rework his promising cifs async readpages readahead \
code).<br> <br>
1) A maintainer would need some system programming experience (e.g. kernel or device \
driver work or willingness to dive in and learn e.g. from the O'Reilly Device Driver \
book), and prove themselves by demonstrating some accepted kernel patches.<br> 2) \
Initial few months of their patches for the subsystem should be carefully reviewed \
(for smbfs by me or the old maintainer and it would not hurt to have linux-fsdevel \
and samba-technical reviews)<br> <br>
The easiest path might be to take an item from the TODO list of one of the \
filesystems and implement it, carving a recognized area that can standalone to some \
extent (so patches collide less often with other work).<br> <br>
For Samba kernel work there is an obvious need to extend (or perhaps reimplement \
something similar) Tim Potter's Samba LSM module for example, and the cifs vfs has \
about 10 items on the todo list.      Across multiple filesystems is one of the more \
interesting problems. - ACL mapping (NFSv4 to CIFS, CIFS to NFSv4, POSIX to CIFS, \
NFSv4 to POSIX, CIFS to unix mode, unix mode bits to NFSv4 etc.) - an obvious case \
for a library in kernel.     Another hot recent area is credential caching/management \
in kernel for cifs and nfsv4 (and ecryptfs etc.) for which a new mailing list was \
just setup by Trond (hosted on the linux-nfs server).<br> <br>
<br>
Steve French<br>
Senior Software Engineer<br>
Linux Technology Center - IBM Austin<br>
phone: 512-838-2294<br>
email: sfrench at-sign us dot ibm dot com<br>
<img src="cid:10__=08BBFAF4DFC0FCDD8f9e8a93df938@us.ibm.com" width="16" height="16" \
alt="Inactive hide details for Hal Wigoda &lt;hwigoda@mindspring.com&gt;">Hal Wigoda \
&lt;hwigoda@mindspring.com&gt;<br> <br>
<br>

<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr valign="top"><td \
style="background-image:url(cid:20__=08BBFAF4DFC0FCDD8f9e8a93df938@us.ibm.com); \
background-repeat: no-repeat; " width="40%"> <ul>
<ul>
<ul>
<ul><b><font size="2">Hal Wigoda &lt;hwigoda@mindspring.com&gt;</font></b><font \
size="2"> </font><br> <font size="2">Sent by: \
linux-cifs-client-bounces+sfrench=us.ibm.com@lists.samba.org</font> <p><font \
size="2">08/23/2005 11:19 PM</font></ul> </ul>
</ul>
</ul>
</td><td width="60%">
<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr valign="top"><td width="1%" valign="middle"><img \
src="cid:30__=08BBFAF4DFC0FCDD8f9e8a93df938@us.ibm.com" border="0" height="1" \
width="58" alt=""><br> <div align="right"><font size="2">To</font></div></td><td \
width="100%"><img src="cid:30__=08BBFAF4DFC0FCDD8f9e8a93df938@us.ibm.com" border="0" \
height="1" width="1" alt=""><br> <font size="2">linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, \
samba-technical@lists.samba.org, linux-cifs-client@lists.samba.org</font></td></tr>

<tr valign="top"><td width="1%" valign="middle"><img \
src="cid:30__=08BBFAF4DFC0FCDD8f9e8a93df938@us.ibm.com" border="0" height="1" \
width="58" alt=""><br> <div align="right"><font size="2">cc</font></div></td><td \
width="100%"><img src="cid:30__=08BBFAF4DFC0FCDD8f9e8a93df938@us.ibm.com" border="0" \
height="1" width="1" alt=""><br> </td></tr>

<tr valign="top"><td width="1%" valign="middle"><img \
src="cid:30__=08BBFAF4DFC0FCDD8f9e8a93df938@us.ibm.com" border="0" height="1" \
width="58" alt=""><br> <div align="right"><font size="2">Subject</font></div></td><td \
width="100%"><img src="cid:30__=08BBFAF4DFC0FCDD8f9e8a93df938@us.ibm.com" border="0" \
height="1" width="1" alt=""><br> <font size="2">[linux-cifs-client] Re: New \
maintainer needed for the Linux smb	filesystem</font></td></tr> </table>

<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr valign="top"><td width="58"><img \
src="cid:30__=08BBFAF4DFC0FCDD8f9e8a93df938@us.ibm.com" border="0" height="1" \
width="1" alt=""></td><td width="336"><img \
src="cid:30__=08BBFAF4DFC0FCDD8f9e8a93df938@us.ibm.com" border="0" height="1" \
width="1" alt=""></td></tr> </table>
</td></tr>
</table>
<br>
<tt>is a maintainer still needed?<br>
and if so, what are the qualifications?<br>
hal wigoda<br>
chicago<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
linux-cifs-client mailing list<br>
linux-cifs-client@lists.samba.org<br>
</tt><tt><a href="https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-cifs-client">https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-cifs-client</a></tt><tt><br>
 </tt><br>
</body></html>


["graycol.gif" (image/gif)]
["pic22813.gif" (image/gif)]
["ecblank.gif" (image/gif)]

_______________________________________________
linux-cifs-client mailing list
linux-cifs-client@lists.samba.org
https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-cifs-client


[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread] 

Configure | About | News | Add a list | Sponsored by KoreLogic