Re: auth/cache-daemon

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Mon, 2003-09-08 at 16:37, Rasmus (Andreas Rasmussen) wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> what's the plan too support authentication in gnome-vfs modules like ftp
> and ssh? I asked around on #gnome and people started to talk about a
> daemon of some sort being in a todo-list! I'd like help (or at least
> try), so - what's happening, and where do I start?

I did some initial work on a gnome-vfs daemon a while ago. Its not
working, but the code is in the ALEX_DAEMON branch. The plan is to move
some modules to the daemon side (such as ftp, zip and tar) so they get a
saner context to work in (can use the glib mainloop etc) allowing
caching to work, and can share data and connections between processes. 

As a part of this the modules in the daemon will share authentication
data between different processes using it. We will also try to make a
gnome-vfs authentication system where non-daemon using modules can
load/store authentication data in the daemon so that each process using
the module doesn't have to enter the username/password.

There has been requests for a gnome keyring system. This could possibly
also be in the realm of the gnome-vfs daemon. We'll have to look at how
other keyring systems work and design something we like. (If there is
time for this.)

At the moment my focus has been (and still is for a while) on the gnome
2.4 release, so no new development has been done. However, we'll soon
release 2.4 and we can start working on 2.5 stuff.

Several people have expressed interest in working on this, which seems
good. We should start a design discussion about how we like it to work.
The daemon work is very complicated since it has to be threadsafe using
the new ORBit2 extensions, and also clean up perfectly when clients
unexpectedly close. I'd like to finish this work soon so we can start
experimenting with the daemon a bit more.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's a benighted Jewish librarian who must take medication to keep him sane. 
She's an enchanted junkie college professor with a birthmark shaped like 
Liberty's torch. They fight crime!