[Swan-dev] future of 9fs

[Paul Wouters]

On Wed, 17 May 2017, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:

> For testing, we use 9fs.  It's a handy way of getting information from our
> virtual machines into out real-world file system.
>
> I don't remember the details, but the future of 9fs in Red Hat products
> seemed precarious.  I think that it was not in RHEL 7.
>
> This article suggests that Zen will use it.  Is this going to help us?
> Or is this just about using the protocol and not the code?
> <https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Xen-Linux-4.12-Changes>

It looks that is good news for 9pfs, but not sure if that will change
RHEL to enable write support....

Things are still moving in this space. There is also the recent
overlayfs that might do what we want, at least in a docker context.

I think running most simple tests in some low overhead namespace
container might still be good way of running most tests.

Paul