Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!ll-xn!mit-eddie!bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!nessus
From: nessus@athena.mit.edu (Doug Alan)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: I want my bug-free NFS patch!
Message-ID: <9514@eddie.MIT.EDU>
Date: 17 Jun 88 04:44:13 GMT
Sender: uucp@eddie.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: nessus@athena.mit.edu (Doug Alan)
Organization: Kate Bush and Butthole Surfers Fandom Center
Lines: 40

I just installed a patch to NFS that allows you to mount the entire
filesystem of a remote computer, rather than having to mount all of
its individual disk partitions.  The patch came from someone at BRL,
but the file I have, does not say who -- it only says that his first
name is Doug.  Unfortunately, I have already noticed a bug or two.
The date of the patch I have is 26 Jan 1987.

The most prominent bug is as follows: Let's say the NFS server is
called "server" and you are using a client machine.  'server' has
several disk partions: /a, /b, and /c.  On the client machine, you
have mounted server:/ on /@/server.  You now cd to /@/server/c/foodir,
and do a 'pwd'.  'pwd' should tell you that you are in
/@/server/c/foodir.  But instead of doing that, it says that you are
in /foodir.  If you cd to /@/server/c/foodir/subdir, then pwd says
that you are in /foodir/subdir.  In contrast, if you cd to
/@/server/etc, pwd tells you that you are in /@/server/etc -- which,
indeed, you are.

I have also just noticed another problem since installing this patch.
I cannot say whether or not this bug has always been there, or whether
it appeared upon installing this patch.  This problem is intermittent
and I can not reproduce it on demand.  I was looking at a text file
that was on the remote machine.  Unfortunately, there appeared to be a
bunch of nulls on the end of the file that weren't really there.  On
this particular file, the problem was reproducable for a while, but
eventually it stopped happening.

So, does anyone have a fix for the first problem mentioned above, or
know someone who does?  And does anyone know whether or not the second
problem is caused by the patch and how I should fix it?

The computers involved are VAXstation II's running 4.3BSD+NFS (from U.
of Wisc.).

|>oug /\lan
   (or nessus@athena.mit.edu
       nessus@mit-eddie.uucp)

"Once more at dawn I drive
 the weary cattle of my soul to the mud hole of your eyes"