Re: enumerating exports

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From: Conrad Minshall (conrad@apple.com)
Date: 03/11/99-05:15:25 PM Z


Message-Id: <l03130304b30df24bc0f6@[17.202.43.185]>
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1999 15:15:25 -0800
From: Conrad Minshall <conrad@apple.com>
Subject: Re: enumerating exports

At 4:00 AM -0800 3/11/99, Mike Eisler wrote:
>> Perhaps a similar facility could be made available by NFSv4 servers.
>> For instance, if there was an informal convention that a "contents" file
>> at the server's root contain a server welcome.  The file would be
>> constructed by the server's sysadmin - much in the same way as an
>> /etc/motd
>> on a UNIX system. There wouldn't need to be any specific features in the
>> protocol to support this convention - though the spec could mention it
>> as a "MAY" item.  The sysadmin could put either a helpful list of
>> interesting directories and a description of their contents - or just
>> a "Get Lost" message if it's a private machine.

>However, a less informal mechanism might be more desirable, such as
>a RECOMMENDED attribute which when applied to the ROOTFH, returns the
>enumerated list of path names

Good!  This mechanism meets the needs I was anticipating.  More below...

>My limited experience
>with Appleshare for instance on MAC servers and clients was that
>the server didn't export anything, and access to a folder/disk volume
>was controlled by a per folder password. I found that to be a nice
>change. With that model it is impractical for the server return an
>export list because to do so, it would have to recurisively
>walk its entire tree to determine the folders the client had access to.

Appleshare servers do return export lists.  Oversimplifying, it goes
like this:

Client sends an FPGetSrvrInfo.  Server's reply lists what protocol versions
and user authentication methods may be used.  This is as far as a client
can get without having an authenticated session.  Client obtains a session,
establishing itself as some "user" name already known to the server.  Client
sends an FPGetSrvrParms.  Server's reply lists volumes exported...  all of
them, even ones to which this "user" may be allowed no further access.

Footnotes:

Servers may share (export) any folder or volume, but to clients they
all look like volumes.

The protocol allows for each "volume" to have an additional independant
password protection.  I'm unaware of any usage of this feature.

Based upon the "user" name authenticated an owner/group/world permissions
model is applied to all files and directories.


--
Conrad Minshall ... conrad@apple.com ... 408 974-2749
Apple Computer ... Mac OS X Core Operating Systems ... Filesystems & Kernel
Alternative email address: rad@acm.org.


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