Re: Fixing and importing the fusefs kernel module - any VFS-savvy takers?

Al 28/10/10 13:49, En/na Ivan Voras ha escrit:
> 1) it *is* popular, as reports about its breakage arrive pretty soon
> after it breaks (i.e. due to mainline kernel changes)
>
> 2) it is currently available as a port but it is practically
> unmaintained. The source code archive is from 2008 and the port
> contains a dozen patches to be applied to it to make it work on recent
> systems
>
> 3) it is also not exactly rock stable, though this has improved with
> the above patches;
>
> Currently, with sshfs, it is good enough to:
>
>      - survive blogbench runs
>      - survive fsx runs with arguments "-W -R -L", i.e. no mmaped
> operations, no file size altering / truncate operations
>
> There have been claims it also corrupts kernel memory.
>
> Basically, this is a call for help in working on fusefs. There are
> several developers and users willing to do testing and such but no
> available developers with their hands in the guts of VFS to squash the
> buried bugs. Fusefs might be especially relevant to desktop users and
> as such to PC-BSD developers, so I'm cc-ing Kris in case he has a
> comment.
>
> Is anyone interested?
>

    Hello,

   I don't know whether fusefs-{kmod|libs} is the best option or if it 
would be better to work with puffs (and friend). It is my understanding 
that puffs brings the librefuse library which was written to bring a 
compatibility layer, so any fs written for fuse could be used (with some 
additional work) with puffs (please, correct me if I'm wrong). I also 
know that puffs is not multithreaded and so that means any failure in 
any filesystem using puffs will mean a bottleneck for the whole system, 
not to mention the performance loss we may "achieve" (just kidding) when 
being used by different filesystems in user space.

   And it seems that puffs is closer to the kernel structures than 
current fusefs.

   So it is not an easy choice and I don't which one I would pick.

   Anyhow, I don't have the skills yet to write code, but I have the 
will to learn vfs internals and help finding bugs. Any option you take 
will be good for me. So you can count on me :)

   Best regards,

   Gustau