NFS Priorities Server

No.

Description

Lead developer

Resource estimate

Interested parties

1

Generic correctness issues

• code inspection for security issues
• correctness issues with 64-bit architectures

trondmy
cel

3 developer-months
6 test-months

All interested in generic NFS client robustness

2

NFSv4 client-side delegation support

• finish debugging caching improvements (lock caching)
• need to add RPCSEC_GSS support for the callback channel

trondmy
bfields

1 developer-month
1 test-month

All interested in NFSv4 client feature-completeness

3

Client-side ACL support

• finish testing basic NFSv4 implementation

ngallahe

1 test-month

All interested in NFS ACL support, all versions

4

Build suites of NFS client test software

• Basic suite of check-in tests
• Other suites for long-running tests, like TPC-C and POSIX conformance
• Client scalability tests

Bull Open Source

1 developer-month
6 test-months

All interested in generic NFS client performance, scalability, and robustness

5

Support for NFSv4 named attributes

trondmy
bfields

3 developer-month
1 test-month

All interested in NFSv4 client feature-completeness

6

Real-time NFS and RPC metrics

• Identify developer to provide support in iostat and sar

cel

1 developer-months
1 test-months

All interested in generic NFS client performance and scalability

7

NFS O_DIRECT enhancements

• aio_readv/aio_writev with O_DIRECT files

cel

1 developer-month
1 test-month

All interested in O_DIRECT performance and scalability

No.

Description

Lead developer

Resource estimate

Interested parties

1

Client support for crossing NFSv4 mount points (also NFSv3 nohide)

trondmy

1 test-months

All interested in next two items

2

Support for crossing mount points with different security flavors

• Support for NFS4ERR_WRONGSEC
• Support for NFSv4 SECINFO operation

trondmy

1 developer-month
2 test-months

All interested in support for servers exporting multiple security flavors

3

Client support for migration and replication

• Support for NFS4ERR_MOVED
• Support the fs_locations attribute
• Support for NFS4ERR_FHEXPIRED (volatile file handle expiration)

trondmy

3 developer-months
1 test-month

All interested in support for servers that support migration and replication. NFSv4 "referrals" are useful for building AFS-style namespaces.

4

NFSv4 Idmapper and gssd improvements

• scalability
• more flexible ID mapping

unassigned

3 developer-months
1 test-month

All interested in NFSv4 client configurability, performance, and scalability

5

Miscellaneous RPCGSS items

• support for RPCSEC_GSS privacy
• support for RPCGSS with NFSv2 and v3
• testing with Active Directory KDC
• cross-realm authentication (remote user ACLs)
• testing with NIS and LDAP
• support for Kerberos V with AES and 3DES

bfields

1 developer-month 4 test-months

All interested in NFS client security feature completeness

6

Integrate keyring support into NFS client

• Keyring support developed outside NFS development group

trondmy / kwc

1 developer-months
1 test-months

All interested in NFS client ease-of-use (security)

7

Support for SPKM3/lipkey (user and kernel)

• SPKM3 kernel work done; lipkey still in progress
• SPKM3 user-level still in progress; lipkey not yet started

kwc

2 developer-months
2 test-month

All interested in NFSv4 client feature-completeness, and in support for SPKM3

8

RPC client transport switch

• integrated support for delegation callbacks and NFSv4.1 sessions
• support for RDMA, IPv6, SCTP, TOE, IPsec
• mount command and ABI changes
• better RPC client management of mount option defaults
• dynamic transport module loading

cel

4 developer-months
1 test-month

All interested in IPv6, NFS/RDMA, and other advanced features

9

Support thousands of concurrent mounts per client

• RPC transport socket sharing
• More anonymous major and minor numbers

trondmy

1 developer-month
1 test-month

All interested in generic NFS client performance and scalability

No.

Description

Lead developer

Resource estimate

Interested parties

1

Support for IPv6

Groupe Bull

2 developer-months
3 test-months

All interested in generic support for NFS over IPv6

2

Fine-grained SMP locking

• Replace wait queues and spin locks in the RPC client scheduler with work queues
• Study RPC client CPU cache utilization; cache line bouncing; Memory utilization (space and bandwidth)
• Remove global kernel lock; BKL is held during data copies, effectively serializing them
• NFS client may have stronger dependencies on BKL than RPC client
• RPC lock contention on existing spin locks and locks that disable IRQs
• Enable kernel pre-emption everywhere and make sure NFS client remains robust

trondmy

6 developer-months
3 test-months

All interested in generic NFS client performance and scalability

3

Integrate cachefs for Linux NFS client

• Resolve inode cache aliasing
• Cachefs developed outside NFS development group

trondmy
dhowells

3 developer-months
1 test-month

All interested in generic NFS client scalability

4

Separate submount program for NFS

• Something like /sbin/mount_nfs and /sbin/mount_nfs4 that the real mount command would pass NFS mount requests to.
• Could make it easier for adding new NFS-related fs types like nfsr (RDMA) or rpc_pipefs.
• nfsmount.c is a mess anyway, and should be rewritten.
• Sun now has Connectathon automounter tests for Linux. Also need mount command acceptance and regression tests.
• Support for nfs2 and nfs3 file system types.

unassigned

3 developer-months
2 test-months

All interested in NFS client code maintainability

5

READDIR caching improvements

• fix or remove pre-emption points in cache search
• more efficient storage and management of READDIR/PLUS results
• more effective use of dentry cache
• eliminate O(N!) gendents(3) calls
• support for READDIR operations larger than a single page
• negative lookup caching
• improved NFSv4 READDIR efficiency (READDIRPLUS-like support)

trondmy
cel

3 developer-month
1 test-month

All interested in NFSv4 client performance and scalability

6

XDR cleanups, v2/v3

trondmy

2 developer-month
1 test-month

All interested in generic NFS client performance and scalability, and code maintainability

7

Support for NFS/RDMA

mts

2 developer-months
1 test-month

All interested in generic NFS client performance and scalability

8

Support for NFSv4.1 sessions

mts

2 developer-months
1 test-month

All interested in NFS/RDMA, or in improved DRC behavior

9

Support for large (1024KB) NFS READ and WRITE operations

cel

1 developer-month
1 test-month

All interested in generic NFS client performance and scalability

10

BSD credentials

trondmy

2 developer-months
3 test-months

All interested in NFS client ease-of-use (security)

11

Dynamic execution study of RPC client and GSS

• performance issues with 64-bit architectures
• memory and CPU cache efficiency
• performance characterization of security flavors
• efficiency of soft IRQ mechanism
• study of NIC hardware and driver implementations

cel

6 developer-months
3 test-months

All interested in generic NFS client performance, scalability, and robustness

12

2.6 VFS readahead algorithm analysis and improvements

• Completely new read ahead algorithm in 2.6 VFS
• Develop a test plan for determining how NFS-friendly the new algorithm is
• Work with VFS maintainers and distributors to create an ongoing testing effort that ensures read ahead behavior improves monotonically
• Per-file system pluggable read ahead algorithms?

cel
linuxram

2 developer-months
3 test-months

All interested in NFS client performance, especially over WAN

No.

Description

Lead developer

Resource estimate

Interested parties

1

Maintaining the Linux NFS FAQ

cel

1 developer-month per year

2

Performance characterization and regression testing

unassigned

24 test-months per year

All interested in generic NFS client stability

No.

Description

Lead developer

Resource estimate

Interested parties

1

Support for "llock" mount option

cel

1 developer-month
1 test-month

All interested in generic NFS client performance and scalability

2

Support for "noacl" mount option (disabling ACCESS operations)

cel

1 developer-month
1 test-month

All interested in generic NFS client performance and scalability

3

Coalesce synchronous writes (allow synchronous writes larger than a page)

cel

1 developer-month
1 test-month

All interested in generic NFS client performance and scalability

4

In-kernel client-side NSM

okir

2 developer-month
1 test-month

All interested in NFSv2/3 stability and ease of use

5

Improve behavior of NFS over UDP

trondmy

1 developer-month
2 test-months

All interested in NFSv2/3 client performance, scalability, and robustness

6

Deploy a bug tracking database for NFS developers

trondmy

1 developer-month
1 test-months

All interested in code maintenance

7

Servicability enhancements

• Improving trace messages
• Improving error messages

steved

2 developer-month
2 test-months

All interested in ease-of-use

8

Multi-path I/O and high availability

• Figure out what multi-path means for NFS
• Identify H/A requirements
• Robust implementation of NFSv4 migration and replication

unassigned

3 developer-months
6 test-months

All interested in NFS client availability

9

Support NFS aio

• identify test suites and do performance characterizations

cel

2 developer-months
2 test-months

All interested in using aio