CPIO, RFS, & Crontab ??

[WB3FFV]

   Hello Everybody,

I was just asked a question earlier today that I tought was worth bringing
to the net.  I have a customer that is using RFS under AT&T V/386 Release
3.2.2 with the new StarGroup LanManager server package to link several 
machines together.  The machines seem to work fine untill you try and
cpio somthing across the RFS mounted file systems, and then bang, one of
the servers will panic.  As long as they don't use cpio over RFS all is 
OK, and if they do use cpio it will die everytime with no questions asked.
They were talking with the vendor they got the equiptment and they vendor
claims that you CAN NOT use CPIO over RFS, and they asked if I was aware
(or in agreement) with this.  I didn't really know how to answer this other
than to say I had never been informed of such a problem.  Is anybody here
on the net aware of such a limitation within CPIO ??  If there is such a 
limitation, would using AFIO make any difference??

The next interesting thing they were told is that you can't use CPIO from
inside cron, as cpio has a timout builtin, and that if it runs to the end of
tape for some reason, it will timeout and abort.  My question is, is anyone
on the net aware of an inactivity timer in CRON or CPIO ??  I have never
been told of any such timers, but with UNIX I never rule out the possibility 
of somthing going by unnoticed.  Well I suppose I will sit back and see 
what interesting opinions float in...


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