"CL" == Chuck Lever <chuck.lever...> writes:
"SJ" == Suresh Jayaraman wrote:
... And first of all: it seems that there're an immense amount
of work being done to add the NFS over IPv6 support for
GNU/Linux. Thanks for that!
[...]
SJ> How far we are from getting full IPv6 support?
CL> The short answer is mountd/exportfs will take about six months.
CL> The client side is close enough that I think we can promise basic
CL> IPv6 support for upcoming enterprise releases. We're also
thinking
CL> the kernel work on the server is close enough that few or no kABI
CL> changes will be needed once mountd is working, but that's just a
CL> guess.
CL> The long answer depends on your definition of "full". :-)
Well, I'll try to answer to it based on my own use of NFS
(mostly NFSv3, at this moment), as was suggested.
Basically, every now and then I have to set up some shared
filesystem-like resources. To this end, I usually deploy (at
the same time):
* HTTP, for its ubiquity;
Alias /public /var/public
<Directory /var/public>
Options Indexes SymLinksIfOwnerMatch IncludesNoExec ExecCGI
AllowOverride FileInfo AuthConfig Limit
</Directory>
* Rsync, for its superior handling of replication;
[public]
path = /var/public
comment = Public directory
* NFS, for it requires no specific support from the applications
themselves.
/var/public *(ro,all_squash,async,insecure)
/var/public/debian *(ro,all_squash,async,insecure)
/var/public/storage *(ro,all_squash,async,insecure)
Mostly, these are used to conserve disk space by allowing a few
copies of certain files to be used by a number of users. Rarely
I need to maintain anything writable, and if possible, prefer to
deploy SSH/SFTP for ``uploading''.
I need almost no access management, as most of the data was
received from open sources (say, http://www.debian.org/,
http://www.landcover.org/ or http://wist.echo.nasa.gov/), and
there were no DoS-doers or bandwidth hogs so far.
Actually, even NFSv3 suits my needs almost completely, though
occasionally I need Kerberos.
CL> Does that include complete support for link-local IPv6 addresses?
No. Not for me, at the least. IIUC, these are to be used
mainly for low-level network services and testing. It could be
handy to support these widely, but I'd not make it a priority
task.
CL> Does that include full support for netids in the kernel?
No clue on this, sorry.
CL> Does that include complete multi-homed host support in lockd and
CL> statd?
I believe that multi-homing is going to be more likely in IPv6
environments. I've never experimented with NFS on multi-homed
IPv4 hosts, though, so I'm not sure what's meant by ``complete
support'' here.
CL> Does that include full support for internationalized domain names?
Not for me.
CL> Does that include IPv6 netgroup support?
Do you mean netgroup like in NIS (or LDAP with a NIS-like
schema)? These also could be handy, but not a priority task, at
least for me.
CL> Does it include IPv6 support in TCP wrappers?
In general, I see TCP wrappers as, roughly, a functional
equivalent of netfilter / ip6tables(8). So, once again, not a
priority for me. (If I don't miss something.)
CL> Does it include support for systems that have no IPv4 addresses
CL> (not even loopback)?
Absolutely. But it surely can wait.
CL> There are a bunch of details that still need to be worked through.
CL> I've only been able to guess at what features are required, and
CL> which can be implemented at a later time. What I would dearly
love
CL> to have is a list of specific features that folks feel is a
CL> baseline (based on actual data, of course).
Hopefully, the bits above will help.
CL> Unfortunately there are very few Linux customers who have deployed
CL> IPv6 and an IPv6-capable NFS implementation (like Solaris) and can
CL> tell us what they would need on Linux.
It seems that my brother's going to do me a favor and install
OpenSolaris for me (which, as I saw today, is being able to
export and mount filesystems using NFS over IPv6.)
(I wonder, are there Apache and Rsync bundled with OpenSolaris?)
Perhaps I'll be able to experiment with some (up to 20 or so)
Debian GNU/Linux hosts using it as a file server.
CL> Plus, most distributions don't have fluent user space
CL> infrastructure for IPv6 yet. NetworkManager is one area that may
CL> need work. The Network Administration tool in Fedora is still
CL> IPv4-centric, iirc.
... And, unfortunately, even interfaces(5) handling in Debian
has flaws in that respect. Sigh.
CL> We don't have firewall admin tools that handle IPv6 rules.
Personally, I prefer ip6tables(8), which does.
CL> Unlike IPv4, admins can (and often do) use IPv6-aware kernels
CL> without ipv6.ko, so all of our tools and support have to be
careful
CL> about using IPv6 when the O/S may not support it. This is
CL> different than IPv4, which is nearly always available.
Agreed.
CL> In other words, system support for IPv6 outside of NFS is kind of
CL> like wireless was 5 years ago -- innumerable small admin tools
that
CL> users had to integrate themselves, usually without much success.
--
FSF associate member #7257
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