On Wed, 14 Jul 2004, Mike Waychison wrote:

> 
> As per earlier discussions, I've confirmed that Solaris has no public
> interface for grabbing map information from name services.  Infact, all
> logic is done in the application layer.
> 
> >
> >>SUMMARY
> >>
> >>The current Linux automounter does not properly handle nsswitch.conf.  It
> >>is desirable to leverage the nss library within libc to implement this
> >>functionality, though it is infeasible to do so in the near future.  Thus,
> >>we need to implement our own nsswitch.conf parser within the automount
> >>code.  I believe future implementations should move toward the libc
> >>approach.
> >
> >
> > To early to really discuss whether it would actually be benifical to
> > leverage the libc code. Developing with a eye to this end should show us
> > what oppertunities or shortcommings exist with this approach.
> >
> >
> >>In either approach, we need to move parsing logic out of the init script.
> >>We can do this by making the new parsing code into a sort of library which
> >>can be accessed by a helper program that the init script can run.  It is
> >>insane to try to write this code in two languages, especially when one of
> >>them is shell.
> >
> >
> > My thoughts were a seperate module but maybe not a seperate utility. I
> > haven't done any experimentation with this specifically yet.
> >
> > One thing to keep in mind is that we already have a fair bit of useful
> > code in the lookup modules to talk to different map sources. Perhaps the
> > lookup module interface should be extended to read master maps a well as
> > entries. This is consistent with the current design. Comments?
> >
> >
> >>The current parsing of auto.master is flawed, but can be fixed with the
> >>approach described in the immediately preceeding paragraph.  We definitely
> >>do not want to source _all_ potential auto.master maps.
> >>
> >>[NOTE] Ian Kent has, "making the automounter a threaded app," on his todo
> >>list.  I believe this is partly motivated by the need to move logic out of
> >>the init script and into the c code.  Thus, you would start one
> automounter
> >>process, and it would spawn threads for each mount.  As such, the helper
> >>program approach may only be an interim solution.
> >
> >
> > If we are writting a parser then to turn it into a "supervisor" thread
> may
> > not be that difficult. My experiments with future developments move the
> > code to this type of module seperation because of the way I think things
> > should go.
> >
> >
> >>We need to think about the impact of removing the maptype:mapname grammar
> >>from the map file formats, per example provided by Mike W.  A phasing out
> >>of this seems like a reasonable approach, perhaps starting out with simple
> >>warning messages early on and good documentation on how to get the proper
> >>semantics with the tools available.  Of course, this requires that we
> >>implement the nsswitch.conf parsing logic, first.
> >
> >
> > It shouldn't be to hard to support the existing syntax as an override.
> > While my goal has been to move autofs toward coexistence within Solaris
> > style sites (I haven't been to successful but still want to) I think it
> > would be a shame to discard the individuality and character of the
> > original autofs, created by Peter Anvin for Linux, not for coexistence in
> > Solaris environments. The original autofs had (has) a face of it's own
> and
> > those creative ideas shouldn't be discarded out of hand.
> >
> 
> I agree that supporting the nameservice prefixes as an override is
> possible, but don't believe keeping it as a reminder of 'individuality'
> has any merit.  When nss support comes in, I'd suggest we start
> complaining loud and clear in the logs that nameservice prefixes are a)
> deprecated, b) is completely incompatible with every other autofs system
> out in the wild.
> 
> Prefixes are a hack.  Warts like this should only be supported for a
> short term.  Let's cut our losses and move on.

OK. But it was worth noting the heritage here.

> 
> >
> >>Handling of the '+' inclusion directive should also be implemented.
> >>
> >
> >
> > Part and parcel of the master map parsing.
>

And a hack in itself!
 
> This is not master map specific.  It applies to all flat files.  But you
> knew that right ;)
>

The recursive definition here makes this implementation 
annoyingly difficult.

Ian

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