Subject: Re: ufs-ism in lookup(9)
To: der Mouse <mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
From: Bill Studenmund <wrstuden@netbsd.org>
List: tech-kern
Date: 04/06/2004 09:23:30
--v9Ux+11Zm5mwPlX6
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

On Tue, Apr 06, 2004 at 01:02:15AM -0400, der Mouse wrote:
> >> I think we have two, remote and local.
> > i think "remove vs local" is too aggressive simplification.
>=20
> I agree.

Uhm, I think we lost some context here. My original quote, at the top=20
here, was speaking to caching behavior, to how we use the name cache.=20
Nothing else.

> Consider a disk image in a file on an NFS filesystem, which is backing
> a vnd, a partition of which is mounted as an FFS filesystem.
>=20
> Is that remote, or is it local?  In one sense it is clearly remote (the
> actual data storage is not on the local system), but the current
> implementation will show it as local.
>=20
> In this particular case, for the purposes at hand, I suspect it should
> probably count as local.  I cite it merely to indicate that
> remote-vs-local is not as clear-cut as it sounds at first.

Since we're talking about name caching, the ffs counts as "local" and the=
=20
nfs counts as "remote".

> In particular, I believe this is much more an attribute of the
> filesystem type (ffs, nfs, etc) than it is an attribute of whether the
> storage backing the filesystme is local; just because the two correlate
> perfectly for the most common uses of all filesystems we currently
> support is not a good reason for conflating the two concepts.

You're right that "local" vs. "remote" is a function of the file system,
in this context. But there is a lot of precident for refering to a file
system that is built on a block device as a "local" file system.=20
Regardless of where the blocks are. "remote" file systems are ones that=20
use some form of RPC to get at the file, rather than playing with blocks.

Take care,

Bill

--v9Ux+11Zm5mwPlX6
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature
Content-Disposition: inline

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (NetBSD)

iD8DBQFActmCWz+3JHUci9cRAthrAKCOTm27g4+sX2lD0+JEfXZIVYX0wQCdFK3U
X9ulH/JcRxLKGqYqQRYCrEM=
=/Bux
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--v9Ux+11Zm5mwPlX6--