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From: aps@granite.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Mixing vaxen and suns on NFS
Message-ID: <208@granite.dec.com>
Date: Wed, 25-Mar-87 03:33:11 EST
Article-I.D.: granite.208
Posted: Wed Mar 25 03:33:11 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Mar-87 00:46:44 EST
Organization: Digital Equipment, WSE group, Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 40
Keywords: NFS *not* serious-braindamage

Refering to the article by boyd@basser.oz (Boyd Roberts), he comments
on Andre's article ...
>In article <669@kulcs.UUCP> andre@kulcs.UUCP (Andre De Deurwaerder) writes:
>>We have a number of sun's and a number of vaxen, and plan to install
>>4.3BSD + NFS from Mt Xinu soon.
>>
>>Once this has been installed, we would like to give our users a single
>>home directory, to be used both when the user logs in on a sun and when
>>he/she logs in on a vax.
>
>Well, I would never ever suggest to anyone to run NFS
>with your home directory on another machine.  It's ok for the
>5 minute mail read, but *where* are you when the server crashes?
>It's barbed-wire canoe time.
>
>Sourcing a disparate .profile amidst the ``not found'' and ``core dumped''
>gnashing of teeth, is going to cause you a small amount of trouble.
>And, who *wants* to dump core across the wire?
>

Although I am not going to start a debate about the goodness of NFS,
I would say that the keywords ``NFS serious-braindamage'' is a little
unfair, unkind, and untrue.  NFS is fine when used with an understanding
of its design goals ...

At anyrate, to the point of this message.  Our operations here implement
what andre@kulcs describes: our 8XXX manages the disk farm of all the
major file systems as well as all our users home directories.  Everybody
has a GPX or VSII workstation in their office (except me who has a VS100 and
a VSII) which have local roots but mount *all* other file systems from
the `main frame' VAX.  One thing that is nice that a user can log into
any machine and have their environment.  (The password and other essential
files get copied to all the workstations (and two other larger VAXen) late
at night.)  We run Ultrix and MIT's X.

Using X, some of the people run some of their windows connected to
processes on the main VAX.

This seems to work well for us.
	Armando Stettner.