lwio: Week 3 ending January 30th, 2009

1) Sriram is probably one of our most prolific developers. The SMB server is moving at light-speed. As of yesterday, we can actually do a “net use * \\LinuxServer\share” command on a Windows XP client and connect to a linux server running our server. Sriram has finished NTCREATE, READ, WRITE and CLOSE semantics and has wired them to the Posix virtual file system, which means we are very close to actually being able to copy files from/to Linux server to/from a Windows client. This is our February milestone that we want to reach. Sriram is now on a minor detour where he wants to actually be able to do a “dir” on a Windows client after the “net use * \\LinuxServer/share

2) The Named Pipe file system supports CreateNamedPipe, ConnectNamedPipe, ReadFile, WriteFile and CloseHandle. We tested it yesterday with a named pipe server and a named pipe client with a single pipe, single instance. Next week, we’ll test single pipe, multiple instances and multiple pipe, multiple instances. At this point, the code is stable enough for Brian to retrofit the DCE/RPC server side run-time with named pipes. One of the challenges we’ll face soon enough is that ConnectNamedPipe is a synchronous blocking call. I’m toying with the idea of implementing a sockets-style API for named pipes. It will work better with DCE/RPC and would be an interim step before we incorporate full asynchronous semantics both in the kernel and in the user mode client. Next week should be super interesting.

3) DCE/RPC framework – Brian Koropoff has retrofitted the dce/rpc server side stack to call the named pipe server side infrastructure. We haven’t yet begun testing, but next week should

4) SMB redirector – The redirector has full big-endian support checked in. As a result all of our Solaris, HP-UX PA-RISC and AIX platforms are fully operational.

6) Jerry has gotten a file copy using the local client API running to and from the pvfs driver. The file copies in both directions are identical. In his words “The security and varied NtCreateFile() options is really going to be the lion’s share of the work.”

Next week, we will be branching trees. The 3xxx series (our current QFE release) will be tagged LW5.0-qfe. The 5xxx series (our current trunk) will be tagged LW5.1-qfe and the lwio branch will become our new trunk!! This is huge because once a branch is pushed upstream as trunk, it is now officially tested on a daily basis. In addition, trunk builds will be available on our website. So you can start playing with the new iomgr in a week.

Thanks for reading!