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From: vjs@rhyolite.SGI.COM (Vernon Schryver)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: NFS problems
Message-ID: <7773@sgi.SGI.COM>
Date: Fri, 6-Nov-87 22:58:28 EST
Article-I.D.: sgi.7773
Posted: Fri Nov  6 22:58:28 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Nov-87 04:28:47 EST
References: <8711042328.aa12082@SMOKE.BRL.ARPA>
Sender: daemon@sgi.SGI.COM
Organization: Silicon Graphics Inc, Mountain View, CA
Lines: 36
Summary: IRIS NFS works

In article <8711042328.aa12082@SMOKE.BRL.ARPA>, XBR2D96D@DDATHD21.BITNET (Knobi der Rechnerschrat) writes:
 -  Some programs (e.g. good old Kermit) do wild card expansions in their
 -  code. Due to the lack of existing routines the do it by their own (see
 -  the "expand" modules in Kermit). They use (due to the lack of BSD like
 -  opendir/closedir routines) open and read statement  to access the
 -  directory files (which are told to be "normal" files with the exeption
 -  that you cannot write them). Now the problem: with the EFS directories
 -  everything works fine, with the NFS directories everything I get from
 -  read seems to be  junk. Result: I cannot use Kermit to do wildcard
 -  get/send's on the NFS disks. Is this a problem/bug or feature? Is this
 -  known? Will this be fixed in the next (3.6) release? 

In summary, this is a feature, not a bug, of NFS.
In detail:
  It might be called a bug in how Kermit was compiled for your machine.
      If you got it from SGI, you ought to send a bug report to the hotline.
  The familiar BSD opendir(3)/closedir(3) routines are available on IRIS's.
      Both BSD and SV flavor opendir/closedir functions are available.
      They work on EFS, NFS, and BFS file systems.  To get BSD flavor,
      you must use '-lbsd' and '-I/usr/include/bsd' with ld and cc.
      For BSD style programing, you generally want to use '-lsun -lbsd'
      and '-I/usr/include/sun -I/usr/include/bsd' to get Y.P. support.
      Y.P. will not work unless you also have NFS, but linking with it
      will do no harm.  
  In EFS, it is possible to abuse file directories with open(2) and read(2).
      However, it would be wise not to count on such a 'facility.'
  As is standard in NFS, you get EOF on the 1st read(2) of an NFS file
      directory.
  The only coming change in this area that I recall, is that we will track
      the change made in the SVR3.1 SVID to the magic cookie from telldir(3).
      This means that both flavors of cookie will have the same taste. :-)

Cheers,
Vernon Schryver
Silicon Graphics, Mtn.View, Ca94043
vjs@sgi.com or  {decwrl,sun,adobe,pyramid,research}!sgi!vjs