PC-NFS problems

[Jack P. Weldon]

In article <robert.652582033 at juno> robert at juno.ee.uwa.oz (Roberto Togneri) writes:
>Our setup consists of three IRISes running 3.1d and NFS. Connected
>to these are PC's running PC-NFS 3.0.1. The IRISes are cross-mounted
>via NFS and the PC's mount each root filesystem of the IRISes on
>separate drive letters. 

 [deleted info concerning hanging PC-nfs requests and lp spooling vi PC-nfs]

>Has anybody come across these problems? 

Yes, the hanging issue was fixed in IRIX 3.2.3 (and 3.3 of course). As far 
as being able to spool to SGI machines, one must remember that Sun has a 
vested interest in selling Suns (just as SGI does for IRIS machines), so 
Sun PC-nfs uses BSD print spooling in pcnfsd. SGI has made available a "fixed"
version of pcnfsd that will spool to IRIS local printers. It is available
by sending a 1/4" tape and a postage-paid return envelope with your
request for the pcnfsd executable to: SGI, Attn: Monica Schulze, 2011 North
Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View, CA  94039. 

This is provided as a service to our customers that have nfs, have some 
form of PC-nfs on their PC, and prefer not to port the pcnfsd.c to IRIX.
It is *not* supported by the Hotline.

Another solution would be to use the BSD print spoolers available in 3.3,
but this solution has other pros and cons.

>Another problem which I think has been covered is the incompatibility
>of NFS between IRISes and Suns. We can mount a Sun filesystem happily
>enough but the Suns can't mount the IRIS filesystems. The mount
>program returns a version mismatch diagnostic.  Is this correct?
>Any solutions? Is this problem related to the above problem?

Sorry, but it is a *SUN* bug, not an IRIX bug, and may have bitten other
vendors that have ported Sun's newest nfs code (I've heard that MIPS and the
newest IBM 6000's may have the same mount(1) bug, but this is *not* confirmed)
Here's a repost:

From: jweldon at renegade.sgi.com (Jack P. Weldon)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Sun nfs bug with SGI servers (revisited)
Date: 18 Jun 90 21:18:12 GMT

This is just to clarify the situation concerning the SunOS 4.1 bug that 
keeps Sun clients from mounting SGI nfs servers. Sun has resolved the bug
and will ship a patched mount(1) to any customer with a support contract.

The bug numbers previously posted have apparently been consolidated into
a NEW bug number. The info I have is as follows:

New Bug Report ID:  network/nfs  1036952
Title:  SunOS 4.1 clients cannot mount SGI nfs servers due to version mismatch.

>The above is very annoying because one of the Suns has an Exabyte  drive 
>and if the IRIS filesystems were mounted then they could be 
>archived easily using dump. Normally this is not necessary since a 
>remote dump can be performed but a dump/restore facility does not 
>seem to be provided with the IRISes.

Someone else should comment on the dump/restore issues. Suffice it to say that
dump/restore is BSD, and not an industry standard, though it is widely used.


--
Cheers, 
			        	
Jack P. Weldon
(jweldon at csd.sgi.com)