Subject: [nfsv4] [FedFS] Meeting Minutes, 09/03/2009

From: James Lentini <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 2009 15:58:05 -0400 (EDT)

FedFS Meeting Minutes, 09/03/2009
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Attendees
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Andy Adamson (NetApp)
Craig Everhart (NetApp)
Sorin Faibish (EMC)
Paul Lemahieu (EMC)
James Lentini (NetApp)
Pavan Mettu (Sun)
Trond Myklebust (NetApp)
Chris Stacey (EMC)
Renu Tewari (IBM)
Rob Thurlow (Sun)

Minutes
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+ IETF Note Well Agreement

  This is a reminder that our discussions are governed by the 
  IETF Note Well Agreement. See:

    http://www.ietf.org/NOTEWELL.html

  We will start each week's meeting with this announcement.

+ Review Action Items

 - James Lentini will republish the NSDB draft with these changes on 8/20 

   Complete.

 - James Lentini will send the updated NSDB draft for LDAP expert review

   Complete.

 - James Lentini will checkin these changes to the SourceForge project on 8/20

   Complete.

+ Austin NFS Bake-a-thon

  Trond, Andy, Rob, and Pavan are planning on attending. EMC will 
  be there as well.

  [AI] James Lentini find out who is attending from ONTAP.

+ FSL Pathname Format

  Trond Myklebust pointed out that the format of the fedfsNfsPath is 
  ambiguous. The fedfsNfsPath is described as:
  "The path component of an FSL encoded as a UTF-8 string."
  One interpretation of this is that the string contains the entire path 
  including pathname component separators (e.g. "/" or "\").

  This is in contrast to the NFS practice of not specifying an 
  explicit path component separator. The fs_locations and fs_locations_info 
  attributes represent pathnames using an array of path components. 
  Specifically, a pathname is encoded in an NFSv4 pathname4, an XDR encoded 
  variable length array of variable length opaque data.

  We discussed defining this attribute as a binary field and storing the 
  NFSv4 pathname4 value directly in the field. The consensus was that in 
  this format it would be easy for a NFS server to turn around and send 
  back in a referral.

  Rob noted that the prototype he and Pavan have would need to be updated 
  for this change. He indicated that this format would be fine in the long 
  term.  

  [AI] James Lentini will draft text describing the format of the fedfsNfsPath

+ Multi-Domain Draft

  Section 3 of the draft describes how the NFSv4.1 protocol deals with 
  security and mappings. Andy summarized this section of the draft for the
  group and explained that when joining multiple sites you need some common 
  settings.

  The discussion center on what in the draft was germane to all NFSv4 
  implementations and what was specific to NFSv4 servers exporting a 
  POSIX filesystem. In particular we discussed at length which types 
  of filesystems need to perform the mapping operations described in 
  the draft. 

  Craig described his experiences with DFS. In the DFS system, 
  the filesystem was capable of storing information for the user and their 
  domain in an ACL. He pointed out that not all filesystems will need 
  to perform the mappings described.

  The draft describes how to determine the local representation of the 
  user@domain. This is needed for anything that doesn't put the
  user@domain name into the filesystem. 

  One question is how to determine the domain that is used in for the 
  user@domain string in systems that don't represent users in this 
  way. We discussed how this could be chosen on either the client or 
  the server based on the relevant authentication domain. 

  Craig noted that the NFSv4 specifications allows a user to be 
  associated with multiple ACL names and principles.

  As an example of his goal for this draft, Andy would like to be able to 
  do an "ls -l" on his files from any system and see the same username 
  in all places.

  Andy noted that the draft discusses AUTH_SYS authentication schemes as well. 

  Andy is going to republish the draft within the week. 

+ Relationship between the DNS SRV Draft and Multi Domain Draft

  Andy stated that there did not need to be a relationship between these drafts. 
  Andy is going to discuss some of the details with Craig.

+ Multi-Domain WG Item

  Spencer has invited comments on adding the multi-domain draft to the WG
  agenda. Andy encourage the group to send comments.