Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!NESTOR.BSD.UCHICAGO.EDU!monty
From: monty@NESTOR.BSD.UCHICAGO.EDU (Monty Mullig)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs
Subject: PC-NFS
Message-ID: <8905241634.AA05810@nestor.bsd.uchicago.edu>
Date: 24 May 89 16:34:17 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Distribution: inet
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Tim Williams asks:

>Has anyone out there had any experience with the use of PC NFS which allows
>DOS based PCs to use a SUN as a file server.  Good and bad experiences 
>would be appreciated.


suns product, PC-NFS is exactly this sort of product.  it includes the
server [at least for sun's, and vaxen as well, i believe] and pc side of
nfs, so you don't need to buy them seperately.  the pc software is a
"client-only" implementation, meaning that only hardware attached to the
unix boxes on the net can be shared (with either other unix boxes or pcs),
and hardware on the pcs cannot be shared on the net.

we're generally quite pleased with sun's pc-nfs.  we have it installed here
on a net of one 4/280, 6 3/50s and 15 PCs. it has a number of glitches of 
varying significance, but they're generally more inconveniences than critical
errors.  the product isn't so polished as something like netware, but it
is real tcp/ip, it does allow pcs to mount filesystems on unix machines,
it has telnet and rsh, and it supports [through the lifeline/mail product]
both smtp and popd mail protocols.  also, it has ftp too.  and, if you're
connected to a campus backbone (or something of that sort), which we are,
you can telnet to any other campus host on that back bone.  having real
tcp/ip is a great advantage over netware and, in my opinion, outweighs
netware's polish.  i'd suggest waiting for 3.0.1, which should fix a number
of minor glitches in pcnfs.

--monty


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