Symbolic links and RFS

[Brent Callaghan]

In article <11555 at ulysses.homer.nj.att.com>, cjc at ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Chris Calabrese[mav]) writes:
> I assume that things will follow the way they already work
> in NFS, which is that the symlink is interpreted on the local machine.
>   : 
> Actually this gives some very nice results if you know how to use it.
> For instance, around here we mount /usr on our Suns from a common
> server, but /usr/spool is a symlink back to a location on the
> workstation's private disk.  The same goes for /usr/tmp and a few
> others.  If the link was interpreted remotely, we'd have to mount all
> the directories we wanted under /usr instead of /usr itself in order
> to allow the local workstations their own space for UUCP, mail, etc.

This gets even nicer if you work at a site where the most machines
have the automounter mounted on /net.  Servers can export
filesystems containing symbolic links that have /net in the path.
If the client touches one of these then the client's automounter
mounts the required filesystem and resolves the path.

The big advantage of symbolic links over hard links used to be
that you didn't have to worry about cross-partition references
anymore.  With /net paths you don't have to worry about
cross-server references either!  

Made in New Zealand -->  Brent Callaghan  @ Sun Microsystems
			 uucp: sun!bcallaghan
			 phone: (415) 336 1051