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Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!pyramid!voder!kontron!optilink!cramer
From: cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.intel,comp.unix.questions,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: 386 machines and NFS ??
Message-ID: <1860@optilink.UUCP>
Date: 21 Jan 88 16:46:59 GMT
References: <210@turbo.RAY.COM> <4038@ptsfa.UUCP>
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA
Lines: 61

> 
> I administrate a SUN 3/260C which is used as a PC-NFS controller
> and Yellow Pages Gateway.  We have several Compac 386s connected at 
> this time, via Ungermann/Bass broadband.  The approach we have 
> taken to this point is to use the SUN as a standard multiuser
> development environment via Telnet, and to use the NFS "DOS" disk
> drives for shared PC file systems.  In this fashion, we have high
> performance development environments for both DOS & UNIX applications.
> 
> Things are working out pretty well.  Here's a summary of the
> interesting things we have learned.
> 
> 	PC-NFS is very poor at diagnosing its own problems.
> 	In fact, it cannot even tell whether or not the 
> 	ethernet carrier is present.  The utilities, such
> 	as "nfsping" are less than satisfactory.  The majority
> 	of our transmission problems have turned out to be due
> 	to low signal strength.  When you get hooked up, drag
> 	someone with a signal analyzer out and make sure you
> 	have sufficient DBs to meet your network standard. 

Ditto.  We had several systems that allowed network file server access,
but when you printed a file from Microsoft Word, then exited Word, the
PC locked up.  It turned out the problem was we had used the DOS APPEND
command to add directories to our PATH.  I suspect that PC-NFS MAY pick
up a pointer to the PATH when it starts, and that APPEND is changing the
location of the PATH.  In any case, PC-NFS is not at all good about
figuring this out.

> 	PC-NFS does fight with some software packages, but there
> 	are workarounds.  The major problem is that its drivers
> 	gobble up a terrific amount of memory and are not relocatable
> 	in extended memory.  We are looking at using DESQview or
> 	Windows to allow us to open up application windows with
> 	reasonable amounts of memory.

I'm currently trying to get the InSet text/graphics integrator working
with Microsoft Word and PC-NFS.  InSet grabs the printer interrupt (17H),
but so does PC-NFS.  No problem, I say, I'll install InSet first, then
PC-NFS.  That way they will chain together.  (At least Inset Systems
says it works with other networks).  Nope.  Doesn't work with PC-NFS,
though I still have determined who the most guilty party is.

> 	Our attempts to get advice and assistance from SUN have 
> 	been unsatisfactory.  They tend not to answer mail and not
> 	to call back.  They have broken all committments with me 
> 	to respond to our questions.    

Our experience has been that Sun answers mail and calls back, and really
tries to help us solve the problems -- but the PC-NFS guys know nothing
about the Sun side of networking, and the Sun networking people are
almost completely ignorant of PC-DOS -- to say nothing of the PC-NFS
stuff.

My impression is that the PC-NFS guys are principally useful as 
facilitators -- they talk you through the process by which YOU figure
out what's broken -- they didn't figure out that APPEND was blowing us
out of the water -- we did.
> John Girard

Clayton E. Cramer