Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!ucsd!ucbvax!twg.com!lefty
From: lefty@twg.com
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.appletalk
Subject: Re: Cayman GatorBox questions
Message-ID: <9010241017.aa16164@Mercury.TWG.COM>
Date: 24 Oct 90 17:50:59 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 49

>
>In article <1990Oct20.084809.18120@nntp-server.caltech.edu>, 
>anthony@eeyore.caltech.edu (Lawrence Anthony) writes:
>> does gatorshare or any other software allow you set up your mac as an
>> nfs server?  in particular, i would like to be able to export the hard
>> disk on my mac (which is on localtalk) and be able to nfsmount it on
>> my ethernetted unix box.  among other things, it would be trivial to
>> backup (tar) the mac disks onto 4mm dat drive of the unix box.  is
>> such a scenario possible?  (a gatorbox serves as the localtalk-to-
>> ethernet bridge.)
>> 
>> thanks in advance.
>> 
>> lawrence
>
>No, GatorShare+GatorBox is not UNIX. No nfs-exporting of Mac-drives
>possible (it sais so in the manual).

There is a serious question here of what it would _mean_ to implement an
NFS server on the Mac.  Since NFS files are, by definition, simple byte
streams, how could one handle the fact that Mac files consist of two
disjoint parts, i.e. a data fork and a resource fork?

In the course of implementing our NFS client for the Mac, I looked into
this question, and came up with a couple of alternatives, equally (to my
way of thinking) unattractive.

1] You could come up with some sort of bogus naming convention to
distinguish the data fork from the resource fork.  Unattractive because
everybody would have to agree on whatever convention you arrived at.  Note
that this alternative doesn't address Mac-specific directory information,
such as type and creator, or other Finder info.

2] You could treat each Mac file as an AppleSingle (or binhex or MacBinary
or whatever) format file, translating it on the fly into a unary byte
stream.  Unattractive because the file is essentially useless until
retranslated.  Also unattractive because specific offsets into the file no
longer have any particular meaning.  Note that this alternative only
addresses the Mac-specific directory information by bundiling it into some
kind of header.

As currently defined, the Mac file system would not appear to map well into
NFS' scheme.  Maybe when (and if) NeFS becomes a reality we'll be able to
do something about it...

--
David N. Schlesinger (lefty@twg.com)
Sr. Software Engineer
The Wollongong Group