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From: bsteve@gorgo.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans
Subject: Re: NFS future enhancements?
Message-ID: <12400001@gorgo.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 8-Nov-86 14:26:00 EST
Article-I.D.: gorgo.12400001
Posted: Sat Nov  8 14:26:00 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 11-Nov-86 00:57:49 EST
References: <8955@sun.uucp>
Lines: 41
Nf-ID: #R:sun.uucp:-895500:gorgo.UUCP:12400001:000:1862
Nf-From: gorgo.UUCP!bsteve    Nov  8 13:26:00 1986


In-Response-To: rick@seismo.UUCP net.lan:

> Having to worry about the file system being local or remote defeats one
> of the major purposes of remote file systems.

yup.

> It still astonishes me that they continue to ignore the incredible majority
> of their customers who just want to connect Unix systems to Unix systems. We 
> committed to Unix a long time ago. We have no need for MS-DOS nor
> CMS nor GCOS NFS. I suspect the overwhelming majority of their
> customers don't either. Of course it doesn't sound quite as nice as
> far as marketing bullshit goes, it would just be something that people
> could use.

This is not an accurate evaluation. There are several orders of magnitude
more MS-DOS PC's out there than there are UNIX boxes. Sun has exactly the 
right idea.

> Why is it so difficult to  have a set of OPTIONAL unix extensions that
> MS-DOS (or whatever) could return "failed-unimplemented" on? Then,
> some of us could get their work done with out "surprises" and
> the posturing visionaries could continue their babbling.

(Lighting torch)
Arf. The fundamental problem that we face in dealing with remote "stuff"
that is architecturally very different is that we haven't really arrived
at a common ground for describing remote operations. I agree that remote
operations SHOULD appear identical to local operations to the programmer,
but in reality, we would probably have to give up some of the flexibility
that we want and SHOULD have on the UNIX side. Consequently, we deal with
these nasty, kludgy things in order to retain some flexibility while we try
to integrate truly SCUMBAG things like MS-DOS into our environment. You and
I can yell all day that MS-DOS sucks and that we don't want or need it, and
will change nothing.
(End flame)

   Steve Blasingame (Oklahoma City)
   ihnp4!occrsh!gorgo!bsteve
   bsteve@eris.berkeley.edu