Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!rutgers!husc6!panda!genrad!decvax!eagle_snax!geoff From: geoff@eagle_snax.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: Mixing vaxen and suns on NFS Message-ID: <90@eagle_snax.UUCP> Date: Thu, 2-Apr-87 15:01:00 EST Article-I.D.: eagle_sn.90 Posted: Thu Apr 2 15:01:00 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 4-Apr-87 17:43:59 EST References: <5762@brl-adm.ARPA> <1333@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP> <135@ausmelb.OZ> Lines: 99 Summary: waddya mean, homogeneous?!?! In article <135@ausmelb.OZ>, boyd@ausmelb.OZ (Boyd Roberts ) writes: > Ok, lets look at what's been said. The people who say that it works > all run in a homgeneous environment. That are either all SUNs > or they are SUNs with VAX file-servers. That is a homogeneous environment. I am writing this from my Compaq II, which is currently mounting file systems from three Suns and one Alliant. What do you mean, homogeneous? > NFS works in said role. But you've got to pay a price. > > The price is - > > - a flat namespace Doesn't compute. Flat how? From my PC I see the same hierarchy as from my Sun, and the only thing that's flat is space of hostnames. > > - shiping copies of binaries to machine where they won't run > Actually, I don't ship binaries around much, because of the ethics of license violations. We mainly share data, accessed by tools on ALL types of machines. Most Unix utilities don't care about an extra at each . > - administration limiting the size of hetrogenity Administration is only a headache with sophisticated users. All of our less sophisticated users have the same 'fstab' (or AUTOEXEC.BAT on PC's) and get a true one-world view. > > - the users must be educated to know where the files are > How educated? Every system has a standard tree (well, all except for a couple of real individualists) and the navigation is no more complex than around your typical VAX. > A file-server environment does not ``mix''. It leans to support > one dominant machine type. The NFS claim is to be able to get widely > disparate machines to function together. But, it provides none of > the tools needed to do this. We have CAD tools which run on the Alliant and which everybody knows how to fire up (well, everybody that cares to). NFS per se doesn't provide the tools for heterogeneous networked applications, but RPC/XDR does. We are working on applications which will compile unchanged on PC's, Sun's and VAXen and will net to any of the servers. We don't yet support PC's as servers, but only because of DOS stupidities. > > Where are the name servers? Don't say ``yp''. Because all it does is > is provide one global /etc/passwd. And, very badly at that. You can > do this by simply moving /etc/passwd to globally known place. And, > if you've got symbolic links you don't even need to do that (Sys V > NFS doesn't support them). But what happens if the server that contains /etc/passwd is down? YP is primarily designed to remove single-point-of-failure situations (sorry if I'm underrepresenting it, Rusty), and secondarily to provide a clean standardized way to develop global data-lookup services. > > The point of a network file system is that a pathname is a pathname. > It doesn't matter where it is physically. It should be transparant. > NFS doesn't provide this sufficiently. It provides it as "sufficiently" as the Unix "mount" command does. That is, in a disciplined environment path names are globally unambiguous. If I ran my VAX (well, your VAX) in an random sort of way, popping in as super-user to mount and unmount partitions, then I'd get the same effect as on an NFS net where people randomly export filesystems. If you're saying that we need better administration tools to help people maintain this disciplined environment, EXCELLENT! Have we got a job for YOU!!!! > > It should also work. What is the difference between a disk controller > barfing and a server crashing? If a disk controller dies you call > in the engineers. If a server crashes, what do you do? You say > reboot it? I say ``call in the engineers''. Things should work. Surely > you wouldn't pay for anything less. I wouldn't. If my disk controller barfs and provokes my timesharing VAX into an unseemly panic, my application dies. If my file server crashes, I go have coffee until it finishes fsck'ing and go right on working. Which d'you think I'd prefer? > > > -- > Boyd Roberts boyd@ausmelb.oz | boyd@basser.oz > > When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro... > D -- [content-free messages need no disclaimer. is this content-free? who knows] Geoff Arnold, Sun Microsystems East Coast Division (home of PC-NFS) UUCP: {ihnp4,decwrl,...}!sun!garnold decvax!eagle_snax!geoff