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From: lvc@tut.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: //host vs "mount point"
Message-ID: <2054@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: Sat, 21-Nov-87 19:32:27 EST
Article-I.D.: tut.2054
Posted: Sat Nov 21 19:32:27 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 23-Nov-87 02:43:55 EST
References: <648@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <1668@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> ...
Organization: Ohio State Computer & Info Science
Lines: 45
Summary: this is not a summary

In article <9398@tekecs.TEK.COM>, andrew@frip.gwd.tek.com
	(Andrew Klossner) writes:

    If you mean syntactically recognizing
    /mountRemotesHere/ucbvax/etc/passwd as a reference to
    ucbvax:/etc/passwd, then it's just the same problem pushed down a ways;
    the path already has an interpretation under standard Unix and laying a
    new interpretation on top of it opens the way to ambiguity.

That is what I meant, though I would never give another system access
to a non public file system intentionally.  My main objection to //a
is the null between the two / (this is one of those computing religous
issues).  Certainly there is a difference in what the path name means
when the remote system is mounted or not, but I can live with it.

    If you mean explicitly using a mount(8)-like command to bind an inode
    to the remote root: this isn't practical in an environment of more than
    a dozen or so systems.  I work in a network environment with literally
    hundreds of systems (198 today on one Ethernet alone) where I refer to
    foreign files as //othersystem/pathname.  If I had to mount (as root!)
    each system before I could get to it, it would slow me way down.  But I
    can't mount all these systems in /etc/rc; there are too many of them,
    access permissions are fluid (just like working directories),

That is what I meant, and I agree that it wouldn't be practical for more
than a dozen or so systems.  I wouldn't use it for more than a few.

I work in an environment (AT&T) with thousands of machines wired together
with uucp (using DATAKIT VCS and phone lines).  I'm pretty happy with the
functionality, but the security needs to be better.  Do you really need
instant access to hundreds of machines?
								  and
    Murphy's Law says the one I want will have rebooted since I last
    mounted it so I'll have to remount it anyway.

Not necessarily, as long as the disks are working, and the network
can talk to disks directly, you don't need the other systems running.
I don't know much about networks, are there any that can do this?
I had something like this with two PDP 11/70's that shared dual
ported disks (not a great analogy but you get the idea).

Thanks for your note.

    Larry Cipriani AT&T Network Systems at
    cbosgd!osu-cis!tut!lvc Ohio State University