Path: utzoo!dciem!nrcaer!scs!spl1!laidbak!att!chinet!les
From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.att
Subject: Re: AT&T 3B* networking
Message-ID: <6083@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 24 Jul 88 04:07:10 GMT
Article-I.D.: chinet.6083
References: <1098@woton.UUCP>
Reply-To: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 46

In article <1098@woton.UUCP> riddle@woton.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) writes:
>(3) I have some experience as a user of 4.2BSD NFS, and know about
>"rcp", "rsh", ".rlogin" files, etc.  Does that bear any resemblance to
>RFS?  How can I find out what RFS looks like to the user and to the
>administrator (especially security features)? 

RFS allows mounting directories from one machine into another machine.
All unix semantics are preserved, except for deadlock detection when
locking file regions (i.e. even devices may be accessed by a similar
machine, and FIFO's will work).  Security-wise, a machine password
may be required for the name service, and user ID's can be mapped
on a per-host basis.

>(4) How does RFS interact with my plain old System V mail software? 

Not at all, since it is a file service, unless you happen to make
/usr/mail a remote mount which would only work if the users had the
same login names on all the machines involved.  The same transport
(starlan, tcp, or whatever) would normally allow uucp and cu connections,
though.

>(5) The cells of the above chart marked "yes" without "(RFS)"
>apparently refer to the ability of Starlan to let a 3B2 or a 6386 act
>as a file server for DOS machines.  Correct?  Does this interfere with
>the use of Starlan to provide RFS and other goodies among Unix
>machines? 

The DOS server function does not interfere with other functions on the
same transport network other than the bandwidth taken and the machine
limits on virtual circuits.  In fact, a directory that is being used
by the DOS server may contain (or be contained within) RFS mounts.  This
means the data takes 2 hops across the net to get to the DOS machine,
but it allows sharing data beyond the number of PCs (about 32) allowed
on a single server.

>(6) Is there some basic document, article or book I should read so all
>this will be clear to me and I won't have to ask silly questions? 

I wish....  You should be aware, though that starlan is changing its
low-level protocol and old and new versions will not talk to each
other.  The 6386 (under unix) will only have the new version available
and the 3B1 is unlikely to ever have the new version, so these machines
will not talk to each other.  Also the 3B1 does not have RFS since it
does not have SysVr3, although DOS server software is (or was) available.

 Les Mikesell