Re: [nfsv4] Last call for NSDB Protocol for Federated Filesystems (Oct 4 - Oct 22nd)

Nicolas Williams <Nicolas.Williams@oracle.com> Fri, 05 November 2010 20:52 UTC

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Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2010 15:51:32 -0500
From: Nicolas Williams <Nicolas.Williams@oracle.com>
To: James Lentini <jlentini@netapp.com>
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Cc: Robert Thurlow <Robert.Thurlow@oracle.com>, "nfsv4@ietf.org" <nfsv4@ietf.org>
Subject: Re: [nfsv4] Last call for NSDB Protocol for Federated Filesystems (Oct 4 - Oct 22nd)
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On Fri, Nov 05, 2010 at 03:15:16PM -0400, James Lentini wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Nov 2010, Nicolas Williams wrote:
> > I think we should pre-define an attribute for back pointers, as that
> > seems valuable even though it's unreliable.
> 
> There isn't interest in this across vendors.

But is that the test of whether a feature should in a Proposed Standard?

The test for a Standard is that any given feature must have two or more
interoperable implementations, but this being a Proposed Standard the
actual rule is more relaxed.

I think a free-for-all annotation is much too likely to result in
interoperability problems.  A rule that "there must be enough interest
across implementors" is not at all helpful if it leads to ad-hoc
solutions.  The WG needs a happy middle.

> > I think a free-form text annotation for sysadmins to make notes is 
> > also a good idea.
> 
> This is part of the specification. See the fedfsDescr.

But we've heard one implementor (us) talk about using it in an ad-hoc
way, rather than as free-form text.  Is that really what's desired?

> > I don't think a free-for-all attribute/value namespace is a good 
> > idea, as then each vendor will add random things that will then 
> > create interop problems (because of collisions, because others will 
> > feel pressured to implement the same attributes with 
> > undocumented/obscure/unstable semantics, ...).  OTOH, a 
> > FedFS-specific attribute/value namespace subject to IANA 
> > registration would be fine, and even desirable for the reasons that 
> > you state.
> 
> Would the registration of vendor-specific attributes be allowed?

That would be the point of a hole subject to registration...  If that's
not desired then surely neither is ad-hoc usage of existing free-form
fields.

Nico
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