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From: eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Simple System Question
Message-ID: <1058@toaster.SFSU.EDU>
Date: 19 Dec 90 07:35:44 GMT
References: <72100017@uxh.cso.uiuc.edu> <15005@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Reply-To: eps@cs.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott)
Organization: San Francisco State University
Lines: 66

In article <15005@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> cpenrose@sdcc13.ucsd.edu
	(Christopher Penrose) writes:
>In article <72100017@uxh.cso.uiuc.edu> beaucham@uxh.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
>>In summary, my questions are:
>>
>>1) What is the '/clients' directory system supposed to be used for?

The /clients directory is used to hold /private file systems for
netbooted clients (such as 105MB NeXTstations whose entire local
storage constitutes "a reasonable amount for swap space").
(No smiley here.)  The separate partition is due to the the NFS
restriction on exporting subdirectories of exported filesystems
(in this case /).

See the man page for newclient(8).

BTW, you can format a 660 as a single partition if you don't need
/clients/.  You get a little more space, but it takes longer to
run fsck after a crash (rare) or power failure (surprise!).
This is getting into generic UNIX system management issues, so
further discussion on this is best taken to an another forum.

>>2) How do you install a user area other than right under root?

Edit /etc/nu.cf
On NeXTs it's considered conventional to create home directories
under /Users/.

>>3) Why don't new users have their names listed in /etc/passwd?

>You have discovered the liabilities of NetInfo, or Network Information
>database.  New users are added directly to a database and are not
>automatically updated in /etc.  I hope this is "corrected" or made an
>option in 2.0.  

This is not "corrected" because it is not a liability.
Just because you haven't seen something before doesn't make it
"wrong."*

(1) There is more information in the NetInfo database
than can be expressed in the "traditional UNIX file formats"
(2) That notwithstanding, you are trying to do something
analogous to displaying a 3-dimensional object on a flat piece
of paper.  It's just not possible--all you can manage are
projections.

If anything, 2.0 is MORE dependent on NetInfo than previous
releases.

We don't even try to maintain the traditional files--they're just
not that useful.

*I'm constantly amazed at the ignorance and closemindedness about
the NeXT, Mach, NetInfo, NextStep, PostScript, etc. I see on
comp.sys.next -- much of it from people who've
(a) never used the machine
(b) never SEEN the machine
(c) never used UNIX
(d) never used a computer that wasn't a PC or a Macintoy
who are absolutely convinced that the NeXT is painted black, and
must be evil, and that it's their divine mission to go around
telling everyone that they're the first in the world to notice
this, and it can't possibly succeed, and the world will end
Real Soon Now because of it.  Like, get a life, ok?

					-=EPS=-