Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!rutgers!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Subject: Re: NFS future enhancements? Message-ID: <5255@brl-smoke.ARPA> Date: Thu, 6-Nov-86 22:16:45 EST Article-I.D.: brl-smok.5255 Posted: Thu Nov 6 22:16:45 1986 Date-Received: Fri, 7-Nov-86 22:58:50 EST References: <596@gvax.cs.cornell.edu> <8955@sun.uucp> <41986@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV> Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) ) Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD. Lines: 28 In article <41986@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV> rick@seismo.CSS.GOV (Rick Adams) writes: >I think the most wonderful thing Sun could do is enhance NFS to support >UNIX SEMANTICS. (You know, things like forced append, 4.2bsd flock, etc). It gets even worse on System V NFS implementations, since one loses record locking and has an implementation conflict with RFS. Needing a global user ID space ("yellow pages") is also unacceptable in many applications. It's sad that NFS seems to be spreading as the "de facto" standard remote file approach when its original design deliberately avoided solving the really hard problems. Either LOCUS or RFS (the AT&T trademarked one, not the U.Wisc. research thing) has much better technical properties. If LOCUS, Inc. or AT&T want to do something about this, they better hurry. One thing Sun does seem to have done right with NFS is to help make it widely available, and that may be what settles the matter. Sun, DEC, and AT&T have all taken quite similar approaches to the "generalized file system"; this would be a good time to produce a merged version that could be used for all of these various net file system implementations. Perhaps then NFS-2 could support full UNIX semantics on UNIX systems and emulate whatever it can on MS/DOS (which I personally don't care about), with support for the "advertise remote mountable file system" and user ID mapping features of RFS. Do these guys talk with each other? Why do we keep slugging it out in the marketplace when cooperation would benefit all involved (including the customers)?