Sun Network File System

[Bill Shannon]

> From UNIX REVIEW, Jan 1985, page 73:
> 
> 	"Sun would like to see its network become the industry
> 	 standard.  It hopes to ensure that other companies
> 	 adopt it by publishing the protocol specifications
> 	 for the entire NFS system and giving away source
> 	 code for all its portable parts (the parts that are
> 	 not operating system dependent)."
> 
> Could someone from Sun Microsystems comment on this?  When
> can I expect it to show up in net.sources?  If this is true
> it could be a very crafty move on their part.

Let me clarify what part of the NFS Sun will publish.  Sun's NFS
protocol is built on top of Sun's RPC (Remote Procedure Call)
protocol, which uses Sun's XDR (eXternal Data Representation)
format to represent the arguments to the remote procedure calls.
Sun will publish the specifications for the NFS protocol, the RPC
protocol, and XDR.  In addition, Sun will publish the source code
for the user-level libraries that implement RPC and XDR.

As to when these specs will be published, I can't say for sure.
I suspect it will be after our 2.0 release, which is the first
release containing the NFS.  2.0 is currently scheduled for
release on April 15.  When we do publish the specs and source
code, we hope to send them to net.sources.  We are also considering
other publication channels.

The user-level RPC library should allow other people to write
applications using RPC.  In combination with the NFS spec, you
should be able to implement user-mode NFS servers and clients
on other 4.2BSD systems.  In addition, they should provide a
useful model for people who want to implement NFS compatible
functionality in non-UNIX operating systems.

Sun's NFS implementation resides in the UNIX kernel and uses a
kernel-level version of the RPC library.  The kernel RPC library
is not generally useful and will not be published.  Also, the NFS
implementation required numerous changes to the 4.2BSD kernel.
These changes will not be published.

Sun is exploring ways of licensing our entire NFS implementation
to other computer vendors who want to provide NFS compatible systems.
Look for more details at the upcoming UniForum and Usenix conferences
in Dallas.

					Bill Shannon
					Sun Microsystems, Inc.