> I'm working on a web-based filesystem for a class term project. The idea
> is to be able to have web servers show up as directory trees on the local
> machine. Example:
>
> cd /web/www.cs.wisc.edu/ ; cat index.html
I do not think you can define semantics.
If you think you can, start hacking midnight commander. Any filesystem
known to midnight commander can trivially be made available to kernel
using podfuk. (I bet you have another three references to podfuk.)
I think you are going to find out that cd /#http:www.cs.wisc.edu is
not good idea. I have
/#url:http:||195.113.31.123|~pavel|podfuk|podfuk.html already working,
but it spawns lynx which is ugly.
If you create http client and put it into midnight, it will be good thing.
> would be equivalent to pulling the page down. Right now the HTTP access is
> handled by a user-level daemon, and the kernel filesystem is an
> indirection layer. The FS gets a read request for a file, passes it to the
> daemon which either a) downloads the file or b) retrieves it from on-disk
> cache, passes a pointer (of some sort) back to the kernel, which returns a
> file descriptor.
And how are you going to handle directory requests?
> Now for the questions.
>
> 1) Is this sane?
Not sure. Have you thought about directory semantics?
> 2) Where should I start looking to write a FS? I've looked through the
> O'Reilly site, but all I found was "Kernel device drivers" which I'm
> not sure is what I want.
> 3) Suggestions? I'd like this to have an existence after the end of the
> semester.
Ok. Start with downloading sources of midnight commander. Glue it
together with some http downloader. Test that, twice. Then glue it
with podfuk and you've reached your goal.
Pavel
PS: If you have some troubles, let me know. I _WANT_ http layer for
midnight. If you can do something sane with directories, it will be
superb. In any case, contact me and I'll try to help you.
-- I'm really pavel@ucw.cz. Look at http://195.113.31.123/~pavel. Pavel Hi! I'm a .signature virus! Copy me into your ~/.signature, please!- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/