Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!jaytee!hinode!geoff
From: geoff@hinode.East.Sun.COM (Geoff Arnold @ Sun BOS - R.H. coast near the top)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc
Subject: Re: PD PC-NFS
Message-ID: <2920@jaytee.East.Sun.COM>
Date: 14 Oct 90 23:30:17 GMT
References: <251@srchtec.UUCP> <9010140041.AA17561@asylum.sf.ca.us> <5Q7*L9F@b-tech.uucp>
Sender: news@jaytee.East.Sun.COM
Reply-To: geoff@east.sun.com (Geoff Arnold @ Sun BOS - R.H. coast near the top)
Organization: Sun Microsystems PC-NFS Engineering
Lines: 20

Quoth zeeff@b-tech.ann-arbor.mi.us (Jon Zeeff) (in <5Q7*L9F@b-tech.uucp>):
#Actually, if you aren't going to have multiple machines accessing the 
#files at the same time, yes - it would be much easier to just 
#read/write blocks from another machine.  A single file on your server
#could be the entire dos file system.  You might have utilities to extract
#dos files from it on the unix machine.  The whole thing would be less useful
#than NFS, but might have some applications (like making backups of dos
#systems easier or saving hard disk costs).

It's been done - RVD (remote virtual disk) was part of the
early PC TCP work at MIT (John - can you add more details/lore/dirt?)
I don't know of any currently-available package that includes this.

Another equivalent mechanism was ND (network disk) which was used
for booting diskless Suns long ago, before we all figured out how to
boot, dump and swap to NFS files.
-- Geoff Arnold, PC-NFS architect, Sun Microsystems. (geoff@East.Sun.COM)   --
   *** "Now is no time to speculate or hypothecate, but rather a time ***
   *** for action, or at least not a time to rule it out, though not  ***
   *** necessarily a time to rule it in, either." - George Bush       ***