Novice NFS questions

[Gustaaf-Jan Heinhuis]

Being new to news I hope some of you out there can help me with a 
problem.

I'm, together with a fellow student (Gerti Schoemaker), working on
a graduation project in computer science concerning NFS.

For those who want to know, we study at the HIO in Enschede which
is a department of the Higher Technical School. Those who are 
familiar with the Dutch school system will know what this is.

Back to the problem. We know that with NFS one can't share peripheral 
devices. What we would like to know is:
		
		1) why this isn't possible,
		2) if you have a neat way to get around this .
(e.g. for back up's we use: 
find / -print | cpio -ocv | rsh <system name> dd of=/dev/rmt0 bs=5k)
		   
In the "Network User's and Administrator's Guide Vol.2" for the 
ICL DRS6000 running system V.4 I found the following:
		"The objects that can be shared through NFS include any 
		whole or partial directory tree or file hierarchy-including
		a single file. A machine cannot share a file hierarchy that
		overlaps one that is already shared. Special device files,
		as well as ordinary files, can de shared over NFS; however, 
		peripheral devices such as modems and printers cannot be shared."
I'd very much like to know what, in this context and in general, is meant 
by "special device files". I, in my innocence, would say such a file
represents a device (like a printer), but apparently I'm wrong.

If it is possible with NFS to share printers and alike we would like to 
know how this is done.

Gustaaf-Jan Heinhuis & Gerti Schoemaker.
heinhuis at dri.nl		   schoemak at dri.nl

             ***************** I is a brane *****************