Re: [Nbd] Any NBD coding documents ?

[Wouter Verhelst <w@...112...>]

On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 02:12:07AM +0300, Ghaleb Salah wrote:
> Hello all,
>   Please, I've got tired looking for any documentation or the theory of
> operation for NBD server/client, if anyone could help, I would be extremely
> thankful.

There are a few things you might want to check out:

- First, the configure script generates a Doxygen file, which I set up
  so that it generates stuff helpful for a developer. It will help you
  understand the structure of the code a bit better, and will generate a
  code browser that I've found useful in the past. The reason I did this
  was that when I inherited the code way back when, I did have a general
  idea of how it worked, but I did not understand the tiny details; this
  was my way of getting to understand that properly. I should add that
  since then I did not properly maintain the coomments in the code
  needed to make the doxygen stuff useful, but hey, it's there.
  If you want this, just run configure, and then 'doxygen Doxyfile'.
  This should create a doc/ directory with some HTML stuff in there.
- Second, if you're interested in the protocol, I once documented that
  on my blog. You can find it at
  <http://grep.be/blog/en/computer/nbd/ethereal_wanted>. I should note
  that the bits about ethereal are now ready (so no need to implement
  that if you feel the need), but the protocol hasn't been changed since
  then.
  Well, actually, that's not entirely true -- there've been some flags
  added in the 'reserved for future use' bits. See negotiate() in the
  server code for details.

That's about it, I guess. Perhaps I should add the protocol
documentation to the source itself, though, but I'll be looking into
that git migration first.

Hope this helps; if you need anything more specific than the above, feel
free to just ask.

-- 
<Lo-lan-do> Home is where you have to wash the dishes.
  -- #debian-devel, Freenode, 2004-09-22