[OpenAFS-devel] fs sysname

[Harald Barth]

Earlier I wrote
> > Looks like the pioctl can return a list of sysnames and the first 4
> > bytes in the blob is the number of sysnames. 

This seems to be in violation with the progref maual with describes
the VIOC_AFS_SYSNAME pioctl to return a null terminated sysname string
in the out buffer and nothing else. The whole matter is not made
easier by Arla's asumption that the first 4 bytes are the length of
the sysname string. According to the documentation it is neither and
the result string should start at byte 0. How should this be fixed?

[AFS Programmer's Reference Manual FS0-D200-00.16.2
 FS/CM-6-22 6.4.9.3 VIOC_AFS_SYSNAME: Get/set thye @sys mapping]

At the same time we should clarify the meaning of the contents in the
in buffer.

> > 2) Shouldn't there be another command to request a list (like fs sysnamelist)?
> 
> perhaps so, probably using a separate pioctl in implementation- or common-
> space

So how should we repair the existing pioctl and how do we want to define the
new pioctl doing the least damage?

> > 3) Is the sysnamelist feature used anywhere or is it safe to say that that
> >    outputformat is a bad idea and change it?
> 
> it's used by people who are using sysname lists. i don't understand this
> question

Are there such people? I do not think that I need to care if things
break for them (they use features which make use of defects in one
implementation which is conflicting with the documentation).

Concerning fs, I'd like to see

#fs sysname 
Current sysname is 'foo'
#fs sysnamelist
Current sysnamelist is 'foo' 'bar' 'baz'
               ^-----no space

independent of how we solve the pioctl problem.

Harald.