(was slashes, now NFS devices)

[Root Boy Jim]

In article <thurlow.667754478 at convex.convex.com> thurlow at convex.com (Robert Thurlow) writes:
>In <124235 at uunet.UU.NET> rbj at uunet.UU.NET (Root Boy Jim) writes:
>
>>I hate to agree with the bellboys, but people,
>>wake up and see the evils of NFS.
>
>So how about telling us about some of them, rather than just ranting?
>Maybe those of us who work with the NFS code can learn something new.

Well I just did. I will try and flesh out a few of them.

* Datagrams - limit the scope of remote filesystems. I should be able
	to mount a file system across the country or around the the
	world, with permission of course. Do you actually think
	your datagrams will make it that far? And in time?
	Plus, TCP already has all the necessary timeout and
	flow control built into it.
* Statelessness (& its friend idempotence) - this forces the breaking
	of many UNIX semantics. For example, you can't do append
	mode to files on every write. And BTW, what is a stale file
	handle? If it is truly stateless, why not just throw it away?
* Devices - If you allow devices on other disks to refer to your
	system, you've created a big security hole. Besides, there
	is no way to refer to other systems' devices, even with
	their permission.
* Audience - In an attempt to support generalized filesystems of
	OS's I will never use, they gave up the semantics of the
	one I truly care about, UNIX. Much better would have been
	a "foreign" switch to relax semantics for DOS, etc.

>NFS gets work done around this company, to the point where I don't see
>how we could do anything without it.  We don't have anything to use in
>its place, and by and large it works very well.  I have some kvetches
>about how Sun never fixes protocol bugs, but they don't affect me on a
>daily basis.

Yes, I agree that it is useful. So is the X Window System, altho
it too is "a grave terminal disease". Both could be a lot better.

The problem is that NFS doesn't deliver all that it (seems to)
promise. It is really just a shadow of a remote UNIX file ststem.
-- 
		[rbj at uunet 1] stty sane
		unknown mode: sane