[OpenAFS-devel] Progress on Linux in-kernel RxRPC library

[Derrick J Brashear]

On Sun, 20 Mar 2005, Kyle Moffett wrote:

> One recent OpenAFS-applicable development in the 2.6 kernel is an
> in-kernel RxRPC library.  I'm currently working with David Howells
> to write a userspace interface to the kernel lib via sockets, with
> the standard syscalls socket(), bind(), connect(), listen(),
> accept(), sendmsg(), recvmsg(), read(), and write() syscalls to
> manipulate the AF_RXRPC sockets.  Would you be interested in using
> such a layer in OpenAFS on Linux?  It will support the new keyring
> infrastructure in Linux 2.6 to allow users to create and pass AFS
> credential information in a standardized way.  When we get a
> prototype working we'll probably write a libkrxrpc for userspace
> that provides an identical interface to the existing IBM RxRPC lib.

As far as problems I'd like to fix in the Linux client we have, this is 
pretty low. Integrating the keyring would be done if we had a set of 
credentials to use already, really the only reason it's at all hard is I 
don't want to solve the same problem a Kerberos implementation will then 
solve probably slightly differently and be incompatible. If it's just 
keyrings with creds you want, the rx implementation can be kept in the 
dark and thus share code and thus enhancements with every other client, 
being portable, instead of special.

Ignoring keyrings (unless you want to argue that it can be solved another 
way, in which case, speak up) what benefit does this offer?