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From: chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: diskless mac-II A/UX
Message-ID: <33128@sun.uucp>
Date: Thu, 5-Nov-87 18:47:31 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.33128
Posted: Thu Nov  5 18:47:31 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 8-Nov-87 11:06:35 EST
References: <235@bernina.UUCP> <933@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <6633@apple.UUCP> <5790@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: chuq@sun.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Organization: Fictional Reality, uLtd
Lines: 26
Keywords: NFS, diskless, A/UX

>>No, no, Mark - we are NOT against diskless A/UX systems. It is very
>>simple - we didn't have the time (and lacked access to appropriate
>>source code) to implement the "page serving" protocols that SUN uses.
>>We have NFS and YP - but not the disk page protocols. I assure your
>>that Apple Marketing, on a regular basis, begs for full diskless
>>A/UX capability.

>Speaking as someone who has watched (from afar, thank god!) almost a thousand
>diskless Suns go out to the UC Berkeley campus and having heard of the many
>disasters that the so-called ND (network disk) protocol creates, I would
>advise against using ND.  (I think even certain people in Sun have No ND
>buttons that they wear.)

I don't want to get into the good points and bad points of ND (I own three
"No ND" buttons, personally...) but I do want to point out that Apple
couldn't port ND if they wanted to, because ND isn't a technology that Sun
make available to outside parties (unlike NFS, YP, RPC, XDR, and NFS). 

Of course, with SunOS 4.0, ND will be going away, and NFS enhanced so
that it will take over all the functionality of ND, clean up some of
the administrative glitches that ND users learn to love, and will
remove any excuse for Apple to not support diskless machines (hee-hee).

chuq
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Chuq "Fixed in 4.0" Von Rospach			chuq@sun.COM	Delphi: CHUQ