kgnbd_ideas

openGFS , a kind of file system.

There is pretty much two things I would like to see in kgnbd. First is a
control interface, probably using a /proc entry. This would be a method of
declaring what devices allow which clients to connect. (I guess I should
also state that it makes sense to me that kgnbd would have the ability to
serve more than one block device.) In this system, clients login
requesting access to a certain device. The server checks its tables,
looking at the entry for that device. That entry will conatin a list of
IPs and/or IP masks. If the clients IP matches this list, it is allowed to
login, else it gets an error. (This is what those unsed structures at the
bottom of the trans.h file are for.) I think it would be good to keep the
current rdev option at module startup, and just have it add an entry to
the control table for that device and any client. 

The second thing is the handling of the server's threads. I would like to
have a set number of threads start when the module is loaded. One of these
will handle logins, the others will handle the traffic to clients. This is
much better than the current userland client that just opens another
thread for each new client. This shouldn't be too hard to do, once I
figure it out.
Right now it leaves all kinds of bogus threads lying around, and trying to
use multiple clients seems to do weird things.