Re: vndcompress et al import?

2017-01-06 Thread Stuart Henderson
On 2017/01/06 15:36, Franco Fichtner wrote:
> Hi Ted,
> 
> Thanks, this is very helpful.  Don't mind exploring other
> routes as long as they are sustainable within OpenBSD, e.g.
> if kernel changes are needed that they are provided by the
> standard kernel eventually.
> 
> > On 3 Jan 2017, at 9:44 PM, Ted Unangst  wrote:
> > 
> > Timo Buhrmester wrote:
> >>> delete [vnd] entirely
> >> Out of curiosity (I'm mostly a NetBSD user), without vnd what would be
> >> the OpenBSD-way of providing a disk-ish interface to a file?
> > 
> > Well, the biggest use of vnd in base was just replaced with the makefs. 
> > (from
> > netbsd, actually.) vnd isn't going to be deleted, but it's pretty easy to
> > make a vscsi provider that talks to a file. If i had a pressing need to 
> > mount
> > compressed disk images, I'd start there. (I had some code for this, but it's
> > in another castle. It's pretty short, only like 20 lines anyway.)
> 
> 
> Can you give just a little more pointers or the code if it
> can be rescued?  Or specifically, is this something that needs
> to be added in the kernel or is it portable in userland?
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> Franco

Userland. vscsi is very roughly something like a scsi equivalent of tun.
For example OpenBSD's iSCSI implementation iscsid(8) is userland and
uses this to interface with the kernel (this has quite a lot more code
than Ted's suggestion though).



Re: vndcompress et al import?

2017-01-06 Thread Franco Fichtner
Hi Ted,

Thanks, this is very helpful.  Don't mind exploring other
routes as long as they are sustainable within OpenBSD, e.g.
if kernel changes are needed that they are provided by the
standard kernel eventually.

> On 3 Jan 2017, at 9:44 PM, Ted Unangst  wrote:
> 
> Timo Buhrmester wrote:
>>> delete [vnd] entirely
>> Out of curiosity (I'm mostly a NetBSD user), without vnd what would be
>> the OpenBSD-way of providing a disk-ish interface to a file?
> 
> Well, the biggest use of vnd in base was just replaced with the makefs. (from
> netbsd, actually.) vnd isn't going to be deleted, but it's pretty easy to
> make a vscsi provider that talks to a file. If i had a pressing need to mount
> compressed disk images, I'd start there. (I had some code for this, but it's
> in another castle. It's pretty short, only like 20 lines anyway.)


Can you give just a little more pointers or the code if it
can be rescued?  Or specifically, is this something that needs
to be added in the kernel or is it portable in userland?


Cheers,
Franco


Re: vndcompress et al import?

2017-01-03 Thread Ted Unangst
Timo Buhrmester wrote:
> > delete [vnd] entirely
> Out of curiosity (I'm mostly a NetBSD user), without vnd what would be
> the OpenBSD-way of providing a disk-ish interface to a file?

Well, the biggest use of vnd in base was just replaced with the makefs. (from
netbsd, actually.) vnd isn't going to be deleted, but it's pretty easy to
make a vscsi provider that talks to a file. If i had a pressing need to mount
compressed disk images, I'd start there. (I had some code for this, but it's
in another castle. It's pretty short, only like 20 lines anyway.)



Re: vndcompress et al import?

2017-01-03 Thread Timo Buhrmester
> delete [vnd] entirely
Out of curiosity (I'm mostly a NetBSD user), without vnd what would be
the OpenBSD-way of providing a disk-ish interface to a file?



Re: vndcompress et al import?

2017-01-03 Thread Theo de Raadt
> Franco Fichtner wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > Is anyone aware or interested in porting vndcompress et al
> > from NetBSD to OpenBSD?
> > 
> > Is there any technical reason against inclusion?
> 
> well, vnd is kind of on life support. my efforts to delete it entirely have
> mostly stalled, but new features are probably best added to some other
> component.

It's not going to happen.  It would be a pointless exercise, I don't see
any point in supporting this.



Re: vndcompress et al import?

2017-01-03 Thread Ted Unangst
Franco Fichtner wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Is anyone aware or interested in porting vndcompress et al
> from NetBSD to OpenBSD?
> 
> Is there any technical reason against inclusion?

well, vnd is kind of on life support. my efforts to delete it entirely have
mostly stalled, but new features are probably best added to some other
component.