Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncr-sd!hp-sdd!hplabs!ucbvax!mtxinu!ed
From: ed@mtxinu.COM (Ed Gould)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs
Subject: Re: Diskless Workstations and /dev/nd
Message-ID: <739@mtxinu.UUCP>
Date: 18 Jan 89 16:18:54 GMT
References: <1988@cpoint.UUCP>
Reply-To: ed@mtxinu.COM (Ed Gould)
Organization: mt Xinu, Berkeley
Lines: 22

>I was just told by former Sun employees that the latest version
>of NFS eliminates /dev/nd.  I guess this makes sense for file
>system partitions, but I would think that for paging partitions
>using a raw network device would make sense.  Is there anybody
>around who can clarify this issue?

That's correct.  The new diskless code (we run diskless MicroVAXen
with it) does not use ND.  ND was a hack put together in a few hours
to be able to run diskless machines before there was a reasonable
protocol available.

Running diskless without ND involves paging to a file on the server.
With the BSD fast file system, this is acceptably efficient.  The
Sun people have stated that their performance goal for diskless NFS
was to be as fast as a local SCSI disk.  While I'm not entirely
convinced that they met this goal, they at least came pretty close.

-- 
Ed Gould                    mt Xinu, 2560 Ninth St., Berkeley, CA  94710  USA
ed@mtxinu.COM		    +1 415 644 0146

"I'll fight them as a woman, not a lady.  I'll fight them as an engineer."