eCryptfs version 0.1

This is a follow-up set of patches in response to comments made after our first submission to the LKML at the beginning of this month. We were able to track down and resolve several bugs, and we feel that eCryptfs is now ready to be merged into the -mm tree as an experimental filesystem.

We have successfully run a series of tests, including FSX, Connectathon, and Bonnie. In addition, we are able to successfully compile the Linux kernel under eCryptfs, both with and without multiple threads on a multi-processor PPC64 machine.

We are able to invoke a bug that terminates a process when we stress the filesystem with multiple concurrent operations (FSX, multiple Connectathon jobs, and a kernel compile running simultaneously), but we cannot oops the kernel with any of our test cases.

eCryptfs utilizes David Howells' keyring; at mount, eCryptfs version 0.1 expects an existing authentication token in the user's session keyring. The tarball containing the code to do this is available from the eCryptfs SourceForge site:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ecryptfs/

Several features demonstrated in prototypes of eCryptfs at OLS in the past have been left out of this release until they can be thoroughly tested; the reduced complexity of this patch set should make it easier to evaluate for initial inclusion into the Linux kernel. Future updates will provide policy support, which will entail per-file passphrase and per-file public key support.

Thanks,
Phillip