[Savannah-hackers] savannah.gnu.org: submission of Kernel mechanism for attaching network services to the file system heirarchy

[sl_vijay]

A package was submitted to savannah.gnu.org.
This mail was sent to address@hidden, address@hidden


vijaykumar S.L. <address@hidden> described the package as follows:
License: gpl
Other License: 
Package: Kernel mechanism for attaching network services to the file system 
heirarchy
System name: ftpfs
This package wants to apply for inclusion in the GNU project

Description:
We are a group of students from Government Engineering College Thrissur,India. 
We have developed a kernel mechanism to attach a major network service ie. ftp. 
In our method the directory structure under the ftp server is mounted to our 
own local filesystem. The mounting will enable the ftp users to access ftp 
using the usual filesystem commands like ls,cp,cat etc. 

        Please kindly look into our method and feedback us with your valuable 
suggestions.

Adavantages     
        Our method has some advantages over ftp. The first one is that due to 
the filesystem approach we can \'cp\' the files from anywhere to anywhere.  
This anywhere to anywhere is important since ordinary ftp can only \'get\' & 
\'put\' to current working directories. 
        (excluding the condition that the files cannot be transferred within 
the ftp server directory structure. ie moving files within ftpserver is not 
implemented.This can be overcome by mounting the same ftp server to two 
different mount points in our local fs and doing file transfer between them.)
        Another advantage is that we can copy the directory trees recursively 
due to this fs implementation.
        
The limitations are as follows.
    1.Cannot use \'less\' command although we can use \'cat\' command.
             (but ftp doesn\'t provide file viewing facility in its 
services.Can only get files and then view it)
    2.The network to network transfer is not possible.
         ie. if we mount an ftp server to /mnt/floppy and suppose the server 
has one file named \'hello.c\'  and one directory called          \'new\'. We 
cannot do the following. 
              
                 \"cp /mnt/floppy/hello.c /mnt/floppy/new/ \"
         
          There is another way to do the same thing ie. mount the same 
ftpserver to /mnt/floppy and /mnt/cdrom and do the following          command
                \"cp /mnt/floppy/hello.c /mnt/cdrom/new/\".

THE USAGE

        copy the directory ftpfs attached to this mail and make using the 
makefile in it. insert the module. then using mount command as follows mount 
the ftpserver.

 \"mount -t ftpfs none /mnt/floppy -o ip=IPADDR,user=USERNAME,pass=PASSWORD\"

IPADDR is the IP address of the ftp server.
USERNAME is the username of the account.
PASSWORD is the password for that account. 

It does not exist yet but I\'m working on it.



Other Software Required:


Other Comments: