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From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: What kinds of things would you want in the GNU OS?
Keywords: GNU OS features kernel fun!
Message-ID: <1750@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 5 Jun 89 19:17:43 GMT
References: <106326@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <4315@ficc.uu.net> <338@arc.UUCP> <208@sopwith.UUCP>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 14

>What we *really* need to avoid is a requirement of mounting filesystems
>from remote machines in order to access them.  It should be possible to
>develop a system using, say the /n/host/ syntax that doesn't require
>mounting filesystems all over creation.

Well, if you want to avoid the requirement that *you* (or your system
administrator) have to type a "mount" command in order to access a file
system, the ONC/NFS "automounter" has, at least in my experience, done a
decent job of this; it's a user-level NFS server that can be mounted
onto one or more directories, and that implements a funny namespace in
those directories such that references to names in those directories
cause remote file systems to be mounted over NFS; the name is then
claimed to be a symlink to the appropriate directory (or file?) within
that file system.