Re: gnome-vfs Reality

["Stuart D. Gathman" <stuart bmsi com>]

On Thu, 4 Dec 2003, Fabio Gomes wrote:

> And the problem of having ugly/useless/broken gnome-vfs modules is due
> to code duplication. It would be very better if GNOME-VFS was a wrapper
> to the VFS code included in the kernel instead of reinventing the wheel.
> Almost every POSIX system has the ability to mount remote locations. We
> only need to learn how to handle this in GNOME. The stuff being done
> this way would mean that every application in the system could benefit
> from GNOME-VFS. Not only GNOME apps.
> 
> Maybe we need some kind of dynamic automount daemon. In contrast to the
> automount daemon that we know, this one would not only mount filesystems
> that are in a configuration file. It will mount anything that the user
> wishes to access. It must interoperate with the desktop when the user
> requests some remote location.

Doing this through the kernel vfs will require a suid root daemon to
do the mounts, and keeping it secure will not be trivial.  Please keep a
multiuser system (e.g. ltsp.org) in mind when designing stuff for Gnome.

Your basic point is right on.  Many protocols are already available
as filesystem modules.  E.g. smbfs.  I also saw a kernel vfs for 
mounting http/fs as a readonly filesystem on freshmeat recently.  (With
possible future support for HTTP PUT and ftp put).

-- 
			Stuart D. Gathman <stuart bmsi com>
      Business Management Systems Inc.  Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
	"[Microsoft] products are even less buggy than others, in terms of
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