[Netnice-kernels] Re: Netnice internals

[Takashi O. <ta...@cs...>]

hi,

fujita-kun, thanks for your help.


Sho Fujita wrote:
> 
> > > There does not seem to be a linux branch in CVS for the user programs?
> > > Can you suggest an order for me to work on these, easiest in your
> > > opinion first?
> >
> > Ah... Fujita kun will set up the programs to work on, for you, shortly.
> > I think it is a good idea to start working on netnice command, first.
> > Then, vifctl (a perl script), and inetd (probably, very easy). Then,
> > you may work on the shell implementation. But, since it can be time
> > consuming, please coordinate well with Fujita-kun. He spent (wasted?)
> > so many days on the porting, and so, knows how to address the problem.
>
> i agree with taka. netnice command is a good starting point. but it
> seems to use /proc. since netnice for other architectures such as
> freebsd4.9, netbsd, and openbsd are using /proc, copy
> netnice/netnice-common/src/* to netnice/linux/src, then modify them.
> vifctl needs vif_capture.c working, please leave it untill later.

i would like to add one more comment here, for scott.

due to several difficulties we have on procfs implementation, we
are shifting to the NNFS-based API. FreeBSD5/Netnice supports NNFS,
as you know, and we'll migrate into NNFS on OpenBSD and NetBSD shortly.

However, its mount point is controversial. FreeBSD/Netnice uses /proc
for NNFS, but, we will need to mount NNFS of Linux at /nnfs, which might
compromise the portability of netnice applications. We may need to think
about OSs which do not support procfs, such as MacOS X and Windows OS, also.

Accordingly, we are planning to add OS-independent library layer in
between the applications and the NNFS API, libnetnice. The draft API will
be released soon, and we are planning to modifiy all the netnice
applications in the package by utilizing the library, after that.

But, modifications of the applications we need for the libnetnice utilization
will be fairly minor. so, please first implement the netnice applications,
utilizing the direct NNFS API, for now.

thanks,


-- taka

p.s. fujita-kun. does vifctl use vif_capture.c, or NPF?

p.p.s. can you suggest/specify a shell program we need to modify for linux?
     bash? bsh? ksh?

thanks!