Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!ukc!inmos!brac!davidb
From: davidb@brac.inmos.co.uk (David Boreham)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re: PCNFS on Apollos
Message-ID: <9317@ganymede.inmos.co.uk>
Date: 7 Aug 90 14:25:56 GMT
References: <9008021356.AA05757@mwunix.mitre.org> <1990Aug2.230727.17560@terminator.cc.umich.edu>
Sender: news@inmos.co.uk
Reply-To: davidb@inmos.co.uk (David Boreham)
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Lines: 59

In article <1990Aug2.230727.17560@terminator.cc.umich.edu> rees@citi.umich.edu (Jim Rees) writes:
>In article <9008021356.AA05757@mwunix.mitre.org>, okay@TAFS.MITRE.ORG
>("Okay, S J") writes:
>  In <9008011858.AA27274@humu.nosc.mil> kent@humu.nosc.mil (Kent K.
>Kuriyama) writes
>  >I have heard that the NFS implementation from HP/Apollo does not 
>  >support PC-NFS.  If this is true has anyone done the port of 
>  >PC-NFSD?
>
>  ...
>
>  Why can't HP just break down and play with others!?!?!?
>
>They did.  Apollo has NFS (although I've heard the server side doesn't work
>too well).  Does PC-NFS use a different protocol from regular NFS?  I
>thought all NFS implementations were supposed to play together?  Why don't
>the PC-NFS folks just break down and play with the others?



OK, to try and clear this one up:

NFS and PCNFS are not the same thing.
To be more specific, there is a PRODUCT, sold
by SUN, called PC-NFS. This gives you the
ability to do remote file access on a UNIX
system from a PC as well as telnet, ftp and
so on. In order to function, this product needs
to perform USER AUTHENTICATION. It does this 
by communicating (using RPC) with a server
running on a UNIX box, called ``pcnsfd'' (or
rpc.pcnfsd). As well as doing the authentication,
the pcnfsd server provides remote printing
services.

Apollo support NFS, and therby support all the
functions provided by PC-NFS, EXCEPT user
authentication. This is not usually a problem
since most sites would have at least one
non-apollo machine running yellow pages and
the pcnfsd anyway. We run our network in this
way and provided you keep the password databases
reasonably unified, there are no problems.

The only time you need pcnfsd running on an
Apollo is where you either have no SUNs or
other BSD-type boxes on the network or where
you keep separate UID domains (not a very 
good idea).

So, there are two things---PC-NFS which is
a bunch of disks and a manual, and pcnfsd
which is a daemon running on a host and 
provides authentication and printing services
to users of PC-NFS.

David Boreham, INMOS Limited | mail(uk): davidb@inmos.co.uk or ukc!inmos!davidb
Bristol,  England            |     (us): uunet!inmos.com!davidb
+44 454 616616 ex 547        | Internet: davidb@inmos.com