Don
Thu Sep 14 09:06:02 CDT 2006
No there is no equivalent, there was once a commercial product that tried to
do this, but it is no longer available, and I have never found anyone who
used it. Bottom line is if you want it to look really like a file system,
you are looking at a ton of work.
Now, if you can live with something that is less than a full filesystem, for
instance no directory commands, but the ability to open things by a name,
you might look at a device namespace. This will not allow you to do NFS or
the like, but it can allow you to support things like opening:
\\..\\newb_dev\\DataBaseTable
where newb_dev is the device you created, and DataBaseTable is the name of
the "file" you want. If you restrict this enough, then I believe UMDF will
work. But once you go beyond a certain point (i.e. things like querying a
directory) this is not going to work with KMDF, and you are back to a file
system.
There is no FAQ for this list, but again at
http:\\www.osronline.com there
is a FAQ for filesystems.
--
Don Burn (MVP, Windows DDK)
Windows 2k/XP/2k3 Filesystem and Driver Consulting
http://www.windrvr.com
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"hidden" <hidden123456@yahool.com> wrote in message
news:uGKZeVA2GHA.4484@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
>
> "Don Burn" <burn@stopspam.acm.org> wrote in message
> news:%236SICa$1GHA.3464@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
>> As Max has already stated you are taking on one of the hardest projects
>> in the kernel as your first effort. Now some things to help:
>>
>> 1. Get the WDK beta (this is the new DDK for Vista) it includes the IFS
>> kit for free.
>>
>> 2. Go to
http://www.osronline.com and join the NTFSD newsgroup, this is
>> where the file system people hang out.
>>
>> 3. Assuming you are a sharp developer, set aside the next two to three
>> years to get this project running to a professional level. Sorry but you
>> are diving into the deepend.
>>
>
> Okay, so I'm *really* a (now embarrassed) newb. But this was helpful.
>
> Let me try a follow on question. My eventual goal is to expose a network
> service on a remote machine as a kind of file system. An example might be
> say NFS, from Windows (client) to Solaris (server). Yes, I understand
> there
> are products to do this, including Microsoft's Unix services thing. So
> another
> example might be exposing a table in a database as a read-only file. Short
> of
> kernel-mode hacking, is there a simplier way to do this? One that doesn't
> have
> such a substantial learning curve?
>
> In the Unix/Linux/BSD word, I think this is a called a "user-mode file
> system".
> Is there an equivalent Windows concept? Named differently? Pl. advise.
>
> Also, is there a faq for this newsgroup? Then I waste less of your time.
> Tx.
>
>
>