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The official documentation is at: http://docs.alfresco.com
Needs to be Reviewed
Overview
This page contains possible tasks for the 1.4 release of Alfresco. A brief list of possible tasks :-
- Add UTF-8 support to FTP server
- Add support for newer commands to FTP server
- Implement DFS support in the CIFS server
- IFS Research
- CIFS Change Notification Problem
- Generic Desktop Actions
- JIRA Tasks
FTP UTF-8 Support
Adding UTF-8 support to the FTP server would bring it into line with the CIFS and WebDAV servers that already support Unicode/multinational characters.
There is a specification available but the FTP specs are often extended in real world implementations and these extensions become the norm. The best way to research/implement UTF-8 support will be to look at the source code for one of the main open source FTP servers.
Support Newer FTP Commands
Bringing the FTP server command support up to date would help with FTP client compatability.
Again there are specifications available but these are extended in real world implementations so looking through source code would be the best way to ensure compatabilty.
Implement DFS Support In The CIFS Server
DFS support would allow the Alfresco CIFS server to link to content on other file servers. The redirection to another file server is done at the folder level, special link nodes could be added via the web client in a similar way to URL link files.
This needs to be researched to figure out the CIFS protocol changes, this will require setting up DFS on Windows and getting packet traces.
IFS Research
To get around a number of problems with the CIFS server approach to sharing files alongside the Windows file server, in particular problems with clients accessing port 445 rather than using NetBIOS, an alternative approach would be to use an Installable FileSystem driver to front-end the Alfresco CIFS server (or possibly a seperate protocol).
Recent Windows updates seem to have changed the way that Windows clients connect in some cases, future updates could block the CIFS server altogether as Microsoft could deem it to be a security risk.
IFS could solve these problems if a driver was installed on the same system running the Alfresco server, then use Windows file sharing to share the Alfresco IFS drive.
This requires research to figure out the feasibility as an IFS driver is a considerable amount of work. I have a copy of the IFS Developer Kit which includes a lot of sample code including an SMB/CIFS redirector.
CIFS Change Notification Problem
There is a problem in the CIFS change notification code that I've been trying to sort out over the last 18 months or more where the client stops using notifications for some reason.
This is noticeable when using the drag and drop application as a check in/out does not update the file listing.
Generic Desktop Actions
The current Windows desktop application allows check in and check out of files using drag and drop. Change the interface to use a more generic approach to allow new desktop actions to be added.
Changed the current I/O control requests to use named actions rather than ids to make it easier to extend. Need some sort of DesktopAction interface on the server side to implement each action, and configuration changes to allow plugging in of actions.
JIRA Tasks
Some of the simpler JIRA tasks that could be done :-
- AR-683 Change NTLM web filter to support Opera 9
- AR-606 Fix SPNEGO/NTLMSSP detection for linux smbclient
- AR-439 Add NetBIOS adapter status request support
- AR-428 Remove content from files marked for delete to prevent unnecessary processing
