Network file server and network file system client

[Martin Decky]

Implement and networked file server and networked file system client.

Details

The HelenOS networking stack is mature and there are some networked servers and clients already implemented, but the system still lacks an user-friendly way of accessing remote file systems and serving its own file system to remote hosts over the network.

The goal of this ticket is twofold: (a) Implementing a networked file server that would serve a part of the local file system in HelenOS to remote host over the network. (b) Implementing a file system client (a file system driver) that would allow to access some remote file server over the network and possibly mount the remote file storage as a file system.

Both the server and the client should support at least one of the following common communication protocols. The server and the client for HelenOS should also have at least some protocols in common in order to be interoperable.

• SFTP
• 9P
• SMB
• NFS

What Gains and Benefits will this bring?

Having a working and interoperable file server and file system client will have a huge number of benefits for HelenOS, ranging from easier debugging and testing (accessing the files of the running HelenOS system remotely and storing data to remote hosts) to practical day-to-day usability.

Difficulty

Medium to High

Required skills

A successful applicant will have good skills of programming in the C languages and the ability to survive in a non-standard non-POSIX application environment. Experience with networking in general and file sharing protocols in particular will be very beneficial.

Documentation

• ​SFTP protocol specification
• ​9P protocol specification
• ​SMB protocol specification
• ​NFSv4 protocol specification

Possible mentors

HelenOS Core Team, Martin Decky

[Jiri Svoboda]

There is a thesis in progress at MFF Network file system for HelenOS ​https://is.cuni.cz/studium/eng/dipl_st/index.php?id=&tid=&do=main&doo=detail&did=169096