[uClibc]Alternative network filesystems

Mike Steed msteed at altiris.com
Thu Feb 14 00:02:52 UTC 2002


I had a need for a uClibc-based smbmount (which requires smbmnt), and wrestled with Samba 2.2.3a for a day and a half before giving up.  This week I successfully built smbmount and smbmnt from Samba 2.0.9 with very little hassle.  The binaries are still large (~300KB each), but they have been rock solid during my testing.

If Samba 2.0.9 (vs 2.2.x) is useful to anyone on the list, I will put together a patch and instructions.

Mike Steed

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jason Bodnar [mailto:jason at shakabuku.org]
> Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2002 4:27 pm
> To: uClibc at uClibc.org
> Subject: [uClibc]Alternative network filesystems
> 
> 
> Since NFS mounting with busybox seems to be a bit spotty (or 
> it just may be a
> problem on my end) and it doesn't seem like smbmount will 
> ever build against
> uClibc due to it's bloat (smbmount not uClibc) I've started 
> looking at a
> couple of alternative network filesystems:
> 
> InterMezzo (http://www.inter-mezo.org)
> 
> InterMezzo was just recently added to the Linux kernel and 
> looks pretty neat.
> At the moment though it doesn't look like a drop network 
> filesystem for an
> embedded system. Currently, InterMezzo replicates the entire remote
> filesystem. Obviously, this is bad news for embedded systems 
> with limited RAM.
> The web site says fetch on demand will be in future versions. 
> The other
> limitation concerning embedded systems that I see is that 
> InterMezzo uses a
> user level file server and cache manager that runs on both 
> the server and
> client and is written in Perl. Perl is the problem but I 
> would think it could
> be rewritten in C and linked against uClibc.
> 
> Coda (http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu/)
> 
> The Linux kernel has support for Coda but it also needs a 
> cache manager on the
> client side. The cache manager, Venus, is written in C++. I'm 
> guessing that
> means it can't be built against uClibc?
> 
> FTP File System (http://ftpfs.sourceforge.net/)
> 
> Yes, Virginia, you can use FTP as a networked file system. A 
> kernel module is
> available and that is all that's required on the client side. 
> The author
> emphasizes you should have decent bandwidth between the 
> client and server and
> recommends that only one process accesses the filesystem at a 
> time. (Sounds
> like it could use a cache manager.) Other than the 
> limitations, FTPfs should
> work out of the box on an embedded system with uClibc.
> 
> 
> Does anybody have any other suggestions?
> 
> Also, I noticed a few people asked about using Samba with 
> uClibc/Busybox. I'm
> broke and unemployed at the moment but would be willing to 
> chip in a few bucks
> to sponsor development of an uClibc-friendly smbmount. 
> Perhaps there are some
> companies out there that could use it as well and may have 
> deeper pockets than
> me ;-)
> 
> Jason Bodnar
> 
> 
> 
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