From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Mar 14 23:56:29 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from ringworld.nanolink.com (ringworld.nanolink.com [195.24.48.13]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 8D72837B719 for ; Wed, 14 Mar 2001 23:56:18 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from roam@orbitel.bg) Received: (qmail 13120 invoked by uid 1000); 15 Mar 2001 07:55:33 -0000 Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 09:55:33 +0200 From: Peter Pentchev To: Kris Kennaway Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.org, fs@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: httpfs Message-ID: <20010315095533.C12432@ringworld.oblivion.bg> Mail-Followup-To: Kris Kennaway , hackers@FreeBSD.org, fs@FreeBSD.org References: <20010310031515.A8998@mollari.cthul.hu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <20010310031515.A8998@mollari.cthul.hu>; from kris@obsecurity.org on Sat, Mar 10, 2001 at 03:15:15AM -0800 Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Sat, Mar 10, 2001 at 03:15:15AM -0800, Kris Kennaway wrote: > A few of us were talking on IRC tonight about how cool it would be to > have an httpfs filesystem -- then it occurred to me we almost have > this already, in the form of the (under-utilised) portalfs. Portalfs > works by handing off everything to a userland daemon which handles the > actual transaction request, so you could easily imagine extending it > to provide an http method similar to the tcp method it currently has > for initiating tcp connections. > > One could probably make this more generic and finish implementing the > undocumented 'exec' method (which currently exists as a stub): this > would run an administrator-specified command (i.e. fixed in > /etc/portal.conf) and pipe the output back to the user. > > A fully navigable httpfs (e.g. one you can ls and cd around in) is > more work and probably requires a full stacking layer, but this would > still be pretty cool. > > Is anyone feeling inspired to implement this? :-) OK, as I've mentioned in a private mail to Kris several hours after he sent out this message, I've done some initial hacking on mount_portal which lets me put: http/ exec http/ /usr/bin/fetch fetch -q -o - http://$1- into /etc/portal.conf, and then do cat /p/http/www.FreeBSD.org/handbook/ (the $1- part refers to path components below /p/http/; $1- means 'path components from 1 to last, separated by /') The code still needs a lot of cleanup before I would dare submit it for review and comments; my question is, should I bother^W^W^Wdoes this look like a reasonable extension to mount_portal, or are there other ways/places that such functionality should be implemented, if at all? G'luck, Peter -- If the meanings of 'true' and 'false' were switched, then this sentence wouldn't be false. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message