On Mon, 2011-01-24 at 13:34 -0500, Jeffrey Altman wrote: > cmdebug is a very OpenAFS implementation specific tool and protocol. > When I implemented the cache manager rpc support for it I found that > there is simply not a good mapping for all of the data from the Unix CM > to the Windows CM. I suspect there would be a significant challenge > supporting Arla and kafs as well. > > The purpose of cmdebug (for the most part) is to gain a real time view > of the internals of the cache manager. As such I question whether such > a tool should be standardized.
Mostly, I agree with you. Certain operations supported by cmdebug, such as fetching host addresses, cell configuration, and maybe even some aspects of cache configuration, are abstract enough to be standardized. Most of it, though, is clearly implementation specific. However, cmdebug's interface to the cache manager is by making RXAFSCB RPC's, and RXAFSCB is a standardized RPC service with a registry. So, while the details of CM debugging RPC's can and should be specific to each implementation, the assignment of RPC numbers cannot be. My preference here would be to assign distinct RPC numbers for each new implementation-specific debugging RPC, just as we would for any other RPC. These numbers should not be reused from one implementation to the next, since that could create problems when a debugging tool from one implementation is inadvertently applied to a cache manager from another. I do not think it would be inappropriate for the standardization group to consider the security implications of some of the debugging interfaces we've seen in the past, and perhaps publish an informational document containing security considerations for such interfaces. However, it would be just as appropriate for OpenAFS to develop such a document on its own, and in either case, I don't think it's high on anyone's priority list. -- Jeff _______________________________________________ OpenAFS-devel mailing list OpenAFS-devel@openafs.org https://lists.openafs.org/mailman/listinfo/openafs-devel
