From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753378AbbESFer (ORCPT ); Tue, 19 May 2015 01:34:47 -0400 Received: from mail-pa0-f41.google.com ([209.85.220.41]:34075 "EHLO mail-pa0-f41.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753207AbbESFeo (ORCPT ); Tue, 19 May 2015 01:34:44 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Originating-IP: [153.142.246.119] In-Reply-To: References: Date: Tue, 19 May 2015 00:34:44 -0500 Message-ID: Subject: Re: Userspace Block Device From: Rob Landley To: Bill Speirs Cc: Kernel Mailing List Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Mon, May 18, 2015 at 2:01 PM, Bill Speirs wrote: > My goal is to provide Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage as a block > device. I would like to leverage the libraries that exist for both > systems by servicing requests via a user space program. > > I found 2 LKML threads that talk about a "userspace block device": > > 2005-11-09: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/346883 > 2009-07-27: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/869784 > > The first thread resulted in Michael Clark suggesting his kernel > module: https://github.com/michaeljclark/userblk The second > essentially resulted in "use nbd". Mr. Clark's module is now over 10 > years old, and ndb seems like a bit of a Rube Goldberg solution. I wrote the busybox and toybox nbd clients, and have a todo list item to write an nbd server for toybox. I believe there's also an nbd server in qemu. I haven't found any decent documentation on the protocol yet, but what specifically makes you describe it as rube goldberg? Rob