Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!ucbvax!RICHTER.MIT.EDU!krowitz
From: krowitz@RICHTER.MIT.EDU (David Krowitz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re: PCNFS on Apollos
Message-ID: <9008031342.AA17494@richter.mit.edu>
Date: 3 Aug 90 13:42:31 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 36

PC-NFS requires an additional server, PCNFSD, in addition to the
regular NFS servers. I believe it is needed to do user authentication
since the PC's don't really have a Unix-style UID/GID database. (I
set up a PC-NFS daemon once, about 4 years ago, to allow a PC access
to an Alliant FX/1; but I don't remember the details). The PC-NFS daemon
sources are readily available. I believe the ones I was using were
shipped with the PC's ethernet board and NFS installation media. The
problem is that since Apollo's NFS implementation is not a port of
Sun's NFS code (which is what almost everyone else's is), the remote
procedure call (RPC) library is not accessable to user programs on
Apollo workstations. You can compile the code, but you can not link it
to the necessary libraries. PC-NFSD is a small program, the version I
had was maybe 40-60Kb of source code. Apollo could have easily ported
the code provided with the PC-NFS package or have reimplemented the
function with their own NFS implementation. Instead, they have chosen
to ship an incomplete NFS implementations (no RPC library, no NFSD, no
ability to execute or compile objects on remote file systems (fixed
on the 3rd or 4th release), etc.); and when the end-user's ask for
the functions to the implemented, the standard reply has been "Oh, you
don't want to use that, you want to use NCS". NCS is a fine product ...
if you are a software systems engineering building a new package ...
but telling end-users that what they want to do is to completely
rebuild both the client and server sides of a distributed file system
on their own is just plain stupid. Every vendor I have had the occasion
to check either has PC-NFSD included in their NFS release, or has the
ability for the user to compile and install the code theirselves (ie.
the RPC calls are available in the system libraries if NFS is installed)
except Apollo.


 -- David Krowitz

krowitz@richter.mit.edu   (18.83.0.109)
krowitz%richter.mit.edu@eddie.mit.edu
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