Re: [nfsv4] FedFS Meeting Minutes, 10/22/2009

[Nicolas Williams <Nicolas.Williams at sun.com>]

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 02:59:42PM -0400, Everhart, Craig wrote:
> On Thursday, October 22, 2009 2:53 PM, LeMahieu, Paul wrote:
> > These topics have been discussed in the past. I'm trying to 
> > refresh my memory on where we left things. Two questions:
> > 
> >     1) Did we ever work on a doc describing the root fileset 
> > details (database schema, etc)?
> >     2) How do file servers exporting the root fileset export 
> > both the unified namespace root fileset, and other exports? 
> > Are we expecting a separate IP for a server to export "/" of 
> > the root fileset, so the physical path of other exports don't 
> > appear in the namespace?
> 
> (1) I don't think we ever did this.

I'm not sure I understood the question.  Was the question "how to
identify the root FSL for some domain?"?  If so, a) I've asked this
before, b) I think one answer is: that's a local problem for root
servers.  Not a very satisfying answer, that.

It'd be nice to be able to store at least [and probably only] the "root
junctions" in a database, possibly the NSDB itself, or perhaps a DNS TXT
RR (you'll really want DNSSEC though!), so that root server roles are
trivial to configure (add the server location to the root FSN's FSL
list, twiddle a bit on the server.

> (2) This is one of the updates pending for the old draft of mine on
> locating NFSv4 roots for organizations.  Someone else recommended that
> the indicated servers should export the organizational roots on some
> reserved name (e.g., /.organization) rather than just "/".  That way, as
> you observe, the indicated file servers could export both an
> organizational root and other things as well.

To support virtualization without having to rely on separate IP
addresses (and host names) for each domain you really want something
like:

    /.nfsv4root/                (a directory present at the root of the
                                 pseudo-fs on root fileservers)
    /.nfsv4root/<domainname>    (a junction)
                     |
		     +--------->root FSL for <domainname>

I think (2) must be resolved ASAP.

Nico
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