libferris is a virtual filesystem (VFS) that runs in the user address space. This means that applications using libferris will use the shared libraries API to access the filesystem which may then delegate to the kernel using libc to perform the desired actions. Operating in the user address space allows libferris to mount things that one would generally not want the kernel to mount. For example libferris mount Berkeley database files, ftp sites, XML files, rpm files, sockets, sysv IPC, mysql databases and remote computers using ssh as a filesystem.
Post a Comment
This looks to be like what GNOME is working on with gnome-vfs and gnome-vfs-extras. It treats all connections ftp, samba, tarballs, bzip tarballs, sockets, as a simple layer for handling different URIs.
I decided to start libferris instead of joining g-vfs for many reasons:
* many people thought that the VFS should never deocde/encode data (such as png, jpg, video and audio).
* the use of EA to anywhere near the extent used in libferris would have been such a long talk on mailing lists.
* AFAIK the stacking of URLs in gnome-vfs is still using the ugly embed the handler with # like syntax, once again there were many folks on #gnome who were saying that this wouldn't be changing.
* The roundtrip of context object <--> DOM and close integration with xslt.
* Different vision for sorting and filtering.
* The merge of file+dir=context.
* I plan to support the reiserfs EA of the new reiser (which will make for very interesting times 
* The use of C++: templates and STL
* For fun ;-)
That said, libferris uses glib2 and I plan to write a gnome-vfs module to mount libferris so that the GNOME community have another way to use libferris.
Well, what can I say other than libferris is a great project. Good problem space, good thinking, and a good stab at coding it all up. Thank you for making it happen.
As luck would have it, I was just at the libferris site a couple days ago. I will be having fun with it as soon as my Linux box is up and going.
My first exposure to integrating disparate data worlds came at Z-Code in 1995 when we did some investigation on evolving Z-Mail into what we called "Active Mail". At the time, Mosaic was still pretty basic and Yahoo! still fit on a couple pages of HTML ;-) This is still an area that is quite undeveloped. Much as the net and the web did for shared computing, there is still much to be done.
In the NT world, I've been happy with 4NT which gives me the ability to work with FTP sites as files.
Cheers for now and I hope to see libferris continue!
#m
this is how it should be done! finally i can mount my home dir from work despite the fact that NFS doesnt work over a WAN. just libferris-ssh and its all there.
its a pity this can't be used by older applications (ls,cat,etc...) but that would be expecting a little much its also a brilliant starting point for anyone wanting to write a microkernel fs server.
I'm pritty sure this is mentioned many times, but I'll do it again here. Installing fsh prior to building libferris makes ferris use fsh instead of ssh directly. fsh is a tool for establishing an ssh tunnel for remote execution of commands without requiring an ssh authentication on every connection: http://freshmeat.net/projects/fsh/?topic_id=44%2C150
Makes doing ferrisls ssh:// many times much faster.
I'm currently using a subscription scheme to try to code ferris full time again. Basically ferris is GPL relying on folks who are interested enough in ferris to step forward and support it.