RFS vs. NFS

[Roy Smith]

jk at apple.UUCP (John Kullmann) writes:
> Everyone wants and uses NFS and no one wants or uses RFS.

To which gwyn at brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) responds:
> Funny, I thought the difference was that RFS is NFS done right.

	From what I hear and understand, both statements are exactly right.
Yes, NFS has its faults (not to mention the Yellow Pages, which is even
worse).  Many is the time I wished I could just do "tar f /system/dev/mt0"
instead of having to deal with rmt.  Nevertheless, I make NFS a requirement
on any system I spec.  It works well enough for me (which means I don't get
bent out of shape over the details of Unix file system semantics) and it
seems to be near-universal.  I can get NFS on everything from IBM-PCs to
Alliant FX/8s, with lots of stuff in the middle (for all I know, it may
even run on Crays, but I can't get Crays).  Until I see RFS being that
ubiquitious, I'll continue to spec NFS.  On the other hand, I don't see any
reason why vendors shouldn't support both NFS and RFS (just like they
support X and NeWS, TCP/IP and ISO, Coke and Pepsi, etc).
-- 
Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016