Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ncis.llnl.gov!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!labrea!rutgers!bellcore!jupiter!karn
From: karn@jupiter..bellcore.com (Phil R. Karn)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans
Subject: Re: NFS vs RFS
Message-ID: <13557@bellcore.bellcore.com>
Date: 21 Jan 89 02:05:28 GMT
References: <9018@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> <7387@chinet.chi.il.us> <437@aurora.AthabascaU.CA> <340@moriaMoria.Sp.Unisys.Com> <709@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu> <2735@rti.UUCP>
Sender: news@bellcore.bellcore.com
Reply-To: karn@thumper.bellcore.com (Phil R. Karn)
Organization: Bell Communications Research, Inc
Lines: 15

>I find it very strange that NFS insists that stateless servers are
>the best, but then has to add statefull servers to handle locking and
>other things.

I became a firm believer in NFS's stateless server approach the very first
time I saw a server crash and reboot. The client applications using it just
froze.  When the server came back to life, they picked up and continued as
if nothing had happened.

From where I sit, the robustness of NFS's stateless approach is such an
overwhelming practical advantage that I'm quite willing to put up with minor
changes in the UNIX file system semantics to get it. And Sun is taking care
of even these esoteric problems with their lock servers.

Phil