Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!lavaca.uh.edu!menudo.uh.edu!lobster!sugar!ficc!peter From: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals Subject: Re: (was slashes, now NFS devices) Message-ID: Date: 6 Mar 91 14:52:21 GMT References: <15236@smoke.brl.mil> <123382@uunet.UU.NET> <1991Feb22.141910.17013@decuac.dec.com> <14363@ulysses.att.com> Reply-To: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) Organization: Xenix Support, FICC Lines: 23 In article fwp1@CC.MsState.Edu (Frank Peters) writes: > > If you can access remote files, why can't you access remote devices using > > the same mechanism? Under RFS, special files are interpreted by the server. > You ignore (or aren't aware of) two important differences between RFS > and NFS that make this impractical. Well, one... > 1. NFS is designed to be operating system independant while RFS > assumes UNIX on both ends of the connection. OpenNET lets you do things like accessing a named pipe from DOS. If anything operating system independence would seem to imply that file semantics should be interpreted in the server. > 2. This is probably most important. NFS is stateless. This is the killer. I think it would be reasonable to relax statelessness for devices, though. -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' peter@ferranti.com +1 713 274 5180. 'U` "Have you hugged your wolf today?"