OpenAFS applied for the second time to be part of the Google Summer of Code, and this year was accepted. Ultimately Google opted to fund 6 projects for OpenAFS; Two more were funded with the same rules using other money including that granted by Google to a sponsoring organization per student.
OpenAFS is a 100% open source globally distributed file system derived from IBM AFS commercial offering as of 1 November 2000. Since IBM released the source code OpenAFS has thrived adding support for new platforms while enhancing its overall performance, scalability and usability.
OpenAFS is a very large and highly complex software project consisting of close to one million lines of source code that is severely under documented. As a result it takes a long time for any developers to become proficient contributors to the core systems. Given the time frames associated with Google Summer of Code the proposed ideas are primarily projects which exist on the periphery of the code base but are nevertheless crucial to an improved end user experience.
OpenAFS on Windows has a very out of date Control Panel application that is used to configure the AFS Cache Manager service. In addition to being out of date, the Control Panel is not the appropriate user interface model for configuring a system service. On Microsoft Windows, system wide services should be configured using the Microsoft Management Console (MMC). This project is to implement a MMC Add-on for the OpenAFS Cache Manager.
Mockups of a proposed MMC user interface can be found at http://www.secure-endpoints.com/openafs-windows-roadmap.html#client service mmc. This project consists of multiple components that can be successfully implemented one at a time. The successful completion of this project does not require that all of the proposed MMC pages be implemented.
This project does not require any prior knowlege of AFS nor any knowledge of OpenAFS internals. By completing this project the developer will become an expert in the Microsoft Management Console interfaces and the Microsoft Component Object Model (COM). This experience can be reapplied to numerous other applications and will prove to be an excellent item on a resume.
The programming language for this project is C/C++. The operating system is Microsoft Windows. The project will aim to support Microsoft Windows versions from XP SP2 to Vista/Server 2008.
Estimated difficulty: moderate
AFS supports advanced file permissions, using Access Control Lists (ACLs) on directories. The traditional AFS permission model is, however, showing signs of age. The AFS model is inflexible for administrators, who must store objects with disjoint permissions in separate directories. The AFS model is also inconsistent with POSIX ACLs (POSIX 1003.1e/1003.2c), DCE DFS, CIFS, and NFSv4 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3530.txt), all of which allow ACLs (of varying types) on a per-file basis. Implementation of this feature will improve the usability of OpenAFS for administrators, and improve its interface with modern platforms.
The objective of this SOC project is to more fully specify and then implement a per-file ACL mechanism for OpenAFS. Engaging with the mentor and the community, the student will work out details of per-file ACEs, relationship of per-file and existing per-directory ACLs, select an on-disk representation for this design in the OpenAFS namei file server, and, minimally, expose the new representation to clients via the AFS file server protocol (its FetchACL RPC and supporting code, eg, RXFetch_AccessList). The project will close with a validation testing phase.
This project will provide an interested student with an opportunity to engage with the OpenAFS codebase and development community in a significant way, in both design and detailed implementation. The student will gain exposure to the complete operation (and end-to-end enhancement) of a major file-system features--from on-disk representation to remote procedure invocation, to manifestation on the client.
The student should have existing skills in C program implementation in a Unix environment, and have minimally completed University courses in data structures and algorithms, preferably in C.
More detail on this project can be found here.
Estimated difficulty: moderate
Disconnected operation for AFS was originally implemented by the University of Michigan, against an old code base. That implementation, and the thinking behind it is detailed at http:// www.citi.umich.edu/techreports/reports/citi-tr-93-3.ps.gz. This code has now significantly bit-rotted, but an ongoing effort is being made to bring it up the standard of the current code base, and integrate it back into the core. Disconnected operation is a key feature for many users, and the ability to operate upon files in the local AFS cache, whilst away from a normal network connection, is likely to open up many new applications.
This project would implement a number of significant improvements to the current disconnected code. Offline authentication tokens are required to allow local users to access files within AFS whilst disconnected from the network, without giving them access to everything within the cache. A journal optimiser would significantly reduce the amount of effort required to replay operations which occurred whilst disconnected. In addition, there are many usability issues to be explored, and resolved, before the code is ready for end user usage.
The implementation language is C, with the majority of the code executing within the operating system kernel. The AFS kernel module runs on Mac OS X, Solaris and Linux, amongst other systems - whilst the student need only work on one of these systems, the completed code should be capable of running on them all. No initial knowledge of OpenAFS is required, a successful student will develop a detailed knowledge of kernel VFS layers, and the issues involved in supporting disconnected operation.
Estimated difficulty: moderate to hard
OpenAFS currently provides readonly replication of data. Many sites would like to use replication on all their data. A proposal exists to address this, however, no work has yet been done on implementation.
The goal of this project is create readwrite replication for OpenAFS. The proposal can be read here and we are available to answer questions about anyt further. Experience with systems and network programming is highly desirable, however, experience with OpenAFS is not necessary.
A student choosing this project will be able to list on a resume and apply the skills necessary for developing network-distributed systems, especially with regard to filesystems.
Estimated difficulty: moderate to hard
The goal of this project would be to bring the Linux kernel kAFS client as close to feature-parity with the existing OpenAFS port as possible. Examples include:
Estimated difficulty: moderate to hard
Current releases do not offer an up-to-date, supported set of OpenAFS servers on Windows. The goal of this project would be to make the necessary changes to allow OpenAFS servers to be run on Windows.
Estimated difficulty: easy to moderate
In order for end users to be comfortable using AFS, the Explorer Shell must provide the same level of functionality that exists for CIFS and local file systems. Selecting an object should display a summary of the object's meta data; the table view should provide options for displaying ACLs, UNIX mode bits, the owner, group information, symlink and mount point targets; the properties dialog should permit interactive modification to meta data values when the user has the appropriate permissions. All in all, the user should not notice that AFS is not a native part of the operating system and the user interface.
Mockups of proposals for the Explorer Shell extension can be found at http://www.secure-endpoints.com/openafs-windows-roadmap.html#shell extensions. This project consists of multiple components that can be successfully implemented one at a time. The successful completion of this project does not require that all of the proposed extensions be implemented.
This project does not require any prior knowledge of AFS nor any knowledge of OpenAFS internals. By completing this project the developer will become an expert in the Microsoft Windows Explorer Shell interfaces and the Microsoft Component Object Model (COM). This experience can be reapplied to numerous other applications and will prove to be an excellent item on a resume.
The programming language for this project is C/C++. The operating system is Microsoft Windows. The project will aim to support Microsoft Windows versions from XP SP2 to Vista/Server 2008.
Estimated difficulty: moderate
OpenAFS is a cross-platform distributed filesystem. Obviously we'd like it to run on *every* platform. We currently have no coverage of the *BSD OSes. We'd like to fix that.
The goal of this project is port OpenAFS to a new OS of the student's choice. Experience with kernel programming is a must, however, experience with OpenAFS is not necessary.
A student choosing this project will be able to list on a resume and apply the skills necessary for kernel development, especially with regard to filesystems. Skills applicable to other kernel data access, manipulation and locking will also be learned.
Estimated difficulty: moderate to hard
OpenAFS' website is designed around the experience of developers. End users and administrators may find the web site to be difficult or frustrating to use.
The goal of this project is to provide a web site which offers an experience to users tailored to their needs, or, for administrators who wish to or have deployed OpenAFS, provides ready access to the information required. At the same time, the web site should be sustainable given the skillset of people maintaining the site and the data therein.
Any technology which can be adapted to handle the content of the web site and the needs of the project is acceptable.
The student will be responsible for determining the needs of the openafs community that the web site will satisfy. This will be done by working with the OpenAFS gatekeepers and surveying the community participants.
A student choosing this project will be able to list on a resume and apply the skills necessary in web site design for any number of projects with virtually any web site.
Estimated difficulty: easy to moderate
In order that authentication systems other than Kerberos 4 be able to be first class authentication systems in the OpenAFS space, extensions to the OpenAFS protections service need to be added.
More detail on this project can be found here.
For successful completion of this project, both the RPC additions and database extensions will need to be completed.
This project does not require any prior knowledge of AFS nor any knowledge of OpenAFS internals. By completing this project the developer will become an expert in the OpenAFS ubik database structure as well as in the OpenAFS Rx RPC system. This experience would prove valuable in dealing with other flat database formats, as well as other RPC systems used in distributed applications.
The programming language for this project is C. This is in portable code which can be run on any POSIX-compliant OS; While MacOS, Linux or Solaris are suggested as development platforms due to availability of debugging tools, any supported OpenAFS platform could be used to do this work.
Estimated difficulty: moderate