A multi-threaded NFS server for Linux

H.J. Lu (hjl@lucon.org)
Sun, 24 Nov 1996 12:01:01 -0800

The one thing Linux doesn't do very well is the NFS server.
There are several ways to improve it. One way is to move
the NFS server into the kernel and run multiple server processes
in kernel.

With the upcoming the Linux C library 6.0, it is possible to
implement a multi-threaded NFS server in the user space using
the kernel-based pthread and MT-safe API included in libc 6.0.
To further speed up the data transfer, we can align the buffer at
the page boundary and kernel may take advantage of it.

Due to the complexity of the NFS server, C++ may be a better
implementation language. I have done a small MT server in C++
under Mach before. It is much cleaner than C and it is much better
than the ST one.

I don't know if anyone is working on the MT NFS server. I
may do it myself if I have some free time. But I will be more
than happy to help out with the MT-safe API as well as the POSIX
thread.

Thanks.

H.J.