[AFS3-std] RxOSD claim on 2 structure members

[Derrick Brashear]

On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Simon Wilkinson<simon@sxw.org.uk> wrote:

> That proposal requires that RPC changes (which in effect this is, as it
> changes the semantics of a particular field) go through a standardisation
> process that we're just getting off the ground. In the future this means
> that there will be an avenue for those who wish to register an unused field
> for their own use to do so. However, the future isn't the issue - it's the
> past we have to contend with. For many years, there has been a free for all
> on the unused fields and bits in the AFS protocol. This means that any use
> of them has to be carefully considered. I suspect that our only way forwards
> is going to be to (as David H. suggests) revise the protocol, and then make
> very clear that unused fields are not 'spare', but 'reserved'.

In the event some "on-disk structure" has been conflated into this
discussion, which it seems to have,
I feel I should mention that uses of those could easily be injected as
tickets in RT, which would help
make changes that use those fields upstream (as opposed to private
code forks) able to detect alternate use
and avoid potential data loss and corruption.

Of course, such changes would be out of scope for a discussion of
RPCs, and would in fact be
implementation-specific and so out of scope for this list entirely.

Derrick