Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2012 19:46:00 +0200 From: Hans Ottevanger <hans@beastielabs.net> To: Bob Friesenhahn <bfriesen@simple.dallas.tx.us> Cc: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Using AMD with NFS Mounts Message-ID: <503FA6D8.5070309@beastielabs.net> In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.02.1208291757120.7395@scooby.simplesystems.org> References: <1825065717.1296363.1346280093679.JavaMail.root@erie.cs.uoguelph.ca> <alpine.DEB.2.02.1208291757120.7395@scooby.simplesystems.org>
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On 08/30/12 01:01, Bob Friesenhahn wrote: > On Wed, 29 Aug 2012, Rick Macklem wrote: >>> >>> It would be more reasonable to re-use the Sun automounter code from >>> Illumos which should be under CDDL license like zfs. The Sun >>> automounter code is more mature than Linux automounter and has fewer >>> missing features and fewer bugs. >>> >> I had actually thought that the Mac OS X autofs was based on the Solaris >> one, but I could be incorrect? > > You are probably correct. I noticed that the Mac OS X Leopard autofs > template configuration files were byte-for-byte identical to those on > Solaris 10. I also found that the Mac OS X automounter worked fine. > >> with Alfred's port and there may be others I am not familiar with. I am >> also not familiar with any patent issues that might exist. Talk of >> patents >> does make me nervous, but I would hope that the CDDL'd code would be ok >> to include as a loadable module.) > > The automounter seems rather low-tech and I can't imagine any active > patents which might apply to it. > Well, implementing a "real" Autofs is probably not that easy. We have seen both Solaris and Linux going through several iterations to get it (mostly) right. If there are any patents on this kind of technology they might very well have expired by now: Autofs as a concept is from the early 90's. As I have mentioned before, AutoFS for FreeBSD was the topic of a GSoC 2006 project and results seem to be presented at BSDCan 2007, see: http://www.bsdcan.org/2007/schedule/events/32.en.html (The presentation has a .ppt extension, but is actually a pdf). Despite plans, to my knowledge nothing ever happened with the results and I have no idea why. As far as I know, the sources are only viewable in Perforce, but not (easily) downloadable by mere mortals, and probably quite stale by now. It might already help if somebody liberated the code from Perforce and put it up for download somewhere. I agree that having a real AutoFS fully interoperable with Linux and Solaris (and Mac OS-X ?) would be really nice to have, especially for scientific and engineering environments. Kind regards, Hans Ottevanger
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