Re: [Xen-users] hostfs for xen?

[Nils Toedtmann <xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Am Donnerstag, den 19.05.2005, 20:16 -0500 schrieb Anthony Liguori:
> Nils Toedtmann wrote:
> > > You could certainly use it to achieve the same goal.
> >
> > Not if my goal is to avoid network filesystems or - like John - to avoid
> > networking at all! Hostfs is _much_ simpler (and more secure??) than nfs
> >
> Which is a perfectly reasonable goal.  Keep in mind however you do not 
> have to expose a virtual network interface to the real network so you 
> can think of a virtual network interfaces as just another interdomain 
> communication mechanism.

True. Some people just don't feel well with running "bloated" services
like samba (which have a well known history of security issues) when
there are simpler mechanisms.


> > or smbfs/cifs. nfs needs a portmapper daemon, a nfs-server, a lock-
> > daemon, uses dynamic port allocations which are hard to firewall,
> > authentication need to be configured properly; cifs/smbfs needs - at
> > least - a nmbd & smbd deamon, sid<-->uid mapping and authentication need
> > to be configured properly ... And you do not want to export a unixish fs
> > to a unixish os via cifs ;)
> >  
> >
> Actually, modern cifs clients provide unix extensions.  Also, you do not 
> need most of the stuff you suggested.  The advantages of not having that 
> much additional software running in dom0 is true. However, a hostfs is 
> a one-OS solution.  It requires significant engineering to extend to 
> other platforms (like the BSD's, Windows, etc.).  That's something to 
> consider.

True. That may be a no-go argument for a xen-implementation :-(


> There are cifs (and nfs) clients for Linux, Windows, *BSD, etc.  I'm not 
> suggesting that this is the only solution but I certainly think it's a 
> useful one.
> 
> > btw: vmware has another functionality they call "shared folders". That
> > comes much closer to hostfs.
> >  
> Isn't shared folders implemented with Samba?

They appear to the guest as network drives, but they do not need a samba
service running on the host. File operations on the host are done by the
vmware process itself and underlie the fs permissions the vmware process
owner has. Maybe vmware internally translates that to cifs shares (using
samba code?).

/nils.


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