HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: terry@thisbe.Eng.Sandy.Novell.COM (Terry Lambert)
Subject: Re: NFS Protocol Specification
Organization: Novell NPD -- Sandy, UT
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 17:58:23 GMT

In article <VANDER.92Sep10173409@vancouver.stars.flab.Fujitsu.co.jp> vander@flab.fujitsu.co.jp (Mike van der Velden) writes:
>
>I have the need to implement a protocol which will function much like
>NFS. [...]
>
>But, before I start, I'd like to solicit opinions from the net.  I'm
>willing to summarize for the net if there is wide-spread interest
>(otherwise I could e-mail a summary to anyone who would be interested).

I'm interested in a summary.

>1>  What would you do to improve the protocol?  Forgetting all about
>    backwards compatibility, would there be any specific functions that
>    you would add/remove/modify?  How about the arguments used by the
>    protocol?

Client cache update/invalidation by the server.  This is probably the number
one item on the agenda.  It also implies that the client keeps "modification
vectors" to insure invalidation or update doesn't occur to client-modified
areas of your block buffer (to avoid introducing time synchronization
problems on data not written from the client to the server yet).

Number two would be common enforcement of byte range locks on a file in
the NFS protocl.  This buys you removal of lock latency at the cost of 1
state for acknowledge or an acquisition delay (necessary to keep two people
from locking the same region successfully).

Number three would be time-stamp update notification from clients so that
stat information is correctly maintained on the server and echoed to all
clients.  This could be pretty expensive, so it may be impractical unless
a cache flush were to occur at the same time.

>2>  What were the major problem areas you encountered in implementing
>    the protocol?

Haven't done a full implementation; only bugfixes; sorry.  You should
make sure the server side is VFS fluent to insure interoperability with
all file systems (allowing their export).  The client side can be
relatively stupid, as either a VFS implementation, or a loop-back with
a master/slave connection to a user space app.

It's especially important to know about epid (effective process id) if
your server is going to implement locks on behalf of remote processes.
This should be the nfs server pid, and you will have to enfoprce client
lock interaction in the server (including range overlap, which UNIX will
try to make into a single locked range).

>3>  Are there any papers or other such documentation on this subject?

There are scads of papers.  There are also refence implementations in
the Net/2 code and the Kyoto user-space NFS code.  Many books also cover
this topic.  You may want to try the technical papaer archives at the
University of New Mexico and Washington State (no address on the first;
the second is at wuarchive.wustl.edu).


					Terry Lambert
					terry_lambert@gateway.novell.com
					terry@icarus.weber.edu

---
Disclaimer:  Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of
my present or previous employers.
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs
From: fred@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (Fred Whiteside)
Subject: Re: Memory usage of NFS daemon bwnfsd 
Reply-To: fred@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (Fred Whiteside) 
Organization: Beame & Whiteside Software Ltd. 
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1992 14:44:15 GMT

In <1992Sep3.034353.13723@ddsw1.mcs.com>, karl@ddsw1.mcs.com writes:
>If you don't have it, get the newest version of the daemon.  There have
>been a number of both bug fixes and enhancements made to it.  I think this
>was one of the problems I've seen in the past which is no longer an issue.

	correct.  i have sent new daemon code to the gentleman.

>As I think that Carl Beame has released bwnfsd to the public, it could (and
>possibly should) even be posted to the net...
>Carl?  Comments?

	again, true.  actually, i have a new, improved version of the
daemon just about ready to go.  lots of new features to support our
imminent release of version 3.0 and the windows goodies, plus many
enhancements from the net as well as bug fixes (printout banner problem
is now *finally* sorted out).  it would likely be a good idea to get
this if you are using the old daemon.

	any suggestions about distribution? i hesitate to post it here,
as that would seem to be extraordinarily bad manners. alt.sources?
we are not currently set up to provide anonymous ftp, but i certainly
have no aversion to others providing that ...

	comments, people?

-fred whiteside
 Beame & Whiteside Software, Ltd.
-- 
Fred Whiteside   Beame & Whiteside Software Ltd., Caledonia, Ontario
fred@bws.com   fred@maccs.DCSS.McMaster.CA   ...!uunet!utai!utgpu!maccs!fred
Xref: sparky comp.protocols.nfs:2254 comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc:5093
From: geoff@tyger.Eng.Sun.COM (Geoff Arnold @ Sun BOS - R.H. coast near the top)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs,comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc
Subject: Re: ?floating license server al la FrameMaker
Date: 7 Sep 1992 14:32:10 GMT
Organization: SunSelect
NNTP-Posting-Host: tyger.east.sun.com

At least one of our large customers is using SaberMeter from Saber
Software. 

Another technique which I've seen - which addresses your concerns
about people taking software home - is the use of a "bug" in
the application which will abort with a DOS error (typically a
divide overflow or similar) unless the application is started
using a "wrapper" which manages the licensing. (Obviously you
can prevent people from copying an application executable by marking
it as execute-only, but this won't work with applications which
require read access to the .EXE to, e.g., load overlays.)

--
Geoff Arnold, PC-NFS architect, Sun Select. (geoff.arnold@East.Sun.COM)
-----------
News software that enforces a four-line .signature limit is responsible for
the fact that these postings just go on and on and on and seem to end in mid-
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs
From: aga@Comtech.com (Alan G. Arndt)
Subject: Re: What are the advantages and disadvantages of B+Wnfs vs SunPCNFS?
Keywords: PC-Email, PC-NFS, HP server
Organization: Comtech Labs Inc, Palo Alto
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1992 00:06:43 GMT

In article <5305@krafla.rhi.hi.is> douglas@rhi.hi.is (Douglas Brotchie) writes:
>In <BuE6Gr.J69@ddsw1.mcs.com> karl@ddsw1.mcs.com (Karl Denninger) writes:
>
>>In article <1992Sep4.165323.2674@awdprime.austin.ibm.com>
> curt@ekhadafi.austin.ibm.com
> (Curt Finch 903 2F021 curt@aixwiz.austin.ibm.com 512-838-2806) writes:
>>>What are the advantages and disadvantages of B+W NFS vs SunPCNFS?
>>>[...]
>
>>From someone who has used both (current B&W, Sun PCNFS about a year back):
>> [...]
>>o)	Support.  B&W hasn't let me down yet; then again, you rarely need
>>	to call them.  [...]
>
>Alas, not my experience.
>We tried an evaluation of BW-NFS in July.
>Sent a technical query by fax 23rd. July.  No reply.
>I sent email message 29th. July.   No reply.
>I sent a final fax 6th. August, including the final sentence: "If I do not
>receive a reply to this fax, I will have no further dealings or communications
>with your company."    No reply.
>
>I cannot comprehend, and will not do business with, a company that ignores
>three enquiries from a prospect.

I would tend to agree.  We talked with them at Interop ( or some convention)
and they were very nice and knowledgeable.  They took our name & address to
send us and evealuation copy.  Very nice I thought.  Many phone calls later
still nothing.  I GAVE UP.  I will stay with PC-NFS.

----
Alan Arndt					Comtech Labs
415-813-4500					4005 Miranda Avenue, Suite 150
aga@Comtech.com					Palo Alto, CA   94304-1218


Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs
From: rabbe@infolog.se (Rabbe Fogelholm)
Subject: PC-NFS Telnet and the keyboard
Keywords: telnet, keyboard
Organization: Infologics AB, Sollentuna, Sweden
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 07:23:33 GMT

I recently started to use the Telnet.exe that comes with PC-NFS 4.0
(in fact I now use the patched 4.0a version of Telnet). This program
seems to be customisable in one direction, by means of the MAPOUT
command which can be put in an initialisation file. Thus I can build a
little table of MAPOUT transformations so that certain 7-bit ASCII
characters are displayed as the corresponding Swedish national
characters.

However, in the other direction things are worse. Some keys don't send
the same characters that I am used to under DOS, for example the key
with '*' and 'PrtSc' (when SHIFTed) sends differently. This key can be
found on Toshiba 5100, by the way.

Outside of Telnet I suppose I use some key translations already: I
have a command "keyb sv 437 c:\dos\keyboard.sys" in my AUTOEXEC.BAT
file. So far I have never really had to bother too much about this.

Any suggestions are welcome. For example, is there some TSR that I
could use together with Telnet, to allow certain keys to be redefined?

________________________________________________________________________
Rabbe Fogelholm, Infologics AB     rabbe@infolog.se    fax: +46 8 960846
From: brent@terra.Eng.Sun.COM (Brent)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs
Subject: Re: NFS recursion
Date: 5 Sep 1992 00:05:05 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems
Distribution: world
Reply-To: brent@terra.Eng.Sun.COM
NNTP-Posting-Host: terra

In article 20217@atlastele.com, sterling@atlastele.com (Sterling Huxley) writes:
>Will this work?
>	# hostname
>	navstar
>	# mkdir /navstar
>	# mount  navstar:/  /navstar
>
>nfs mounting your own root in your own root directory?

Sure, as long as you export it first.

BTW: you'll get *much* better performance if you do a loopback mount e.g. in SunOS

	mount -t lo  /  /navstar





---

Made in New Zealand -->  Brent Callaghan  @ SunSoft
			 Email: brent@Eng.Sun.COM
			 phone: (415) 336 1051

Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs,comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc
From: jzwiebel@pgl-devsvr.den.mmc.com (John Zwiebel (303)977-1480)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs,comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: NFS Over Satellite Link
Date: 9 Sep 92 15:29:48 GMT
Organization: PAGE @ Martin-Marietta

In article <1992Sep9.121006.14055@udel.edu>, pahountis@ncf.al.alcoa.com (Julia Pahountis) writes:
|> Has anyone, or do you know of anyone, who has done NFS over a satellite link?  (Can it be done?)

Haven't done it but I think the turn around time to a geostationary satellite
would be a major problem since its up there at 24,000 miles.  Multiply that 
times 4 to include all your links and you start approaching the RPC time out.
You'd have to increase the number of biods on the clients and nfsd on the 
servers to increase "window" size (the number of outstanding nfs requests)
and have to increase the default timeout for retransmission to avoid too many
repeat requests on your links.  Both of these cause a decrease in NFS
performance on a "normal" NFS path.  (Too many nfsd waste CPU cycles on the
server, too many biods does the same thing on the client)

John Zwiebel
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs
From: hm@odin.fna.no (Herold Myrland)
Subject: NFS activity accounting
Keywords: NFS load, Unix system accounting
Organization: FUNN-Narvik as (Norwegian R&D Network, Narvik)
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 07:05:37 GMT

Hello all you NFS wizards!

Please tell me what system resources on our server the clients (PC's, WS's)
use when they are mounted and working.

Is it right that if a PC that is running (say PC/NFS or PC/TCP w/Interdrive),
it is NOT possible to log how much CPU, RAM, I/O resources he/she consumes
on our server.  All these figures are assigned to 'root' (which runs the
nfs deamons).

We are planning to use standard 'ac' and 'sa' commands in order to keep track
of how much each user "uses" our system (a Solbourne 5E/902, OS/MP 4.1A).  Which
parameters should we then measure in order to get a complete picture of the load
of our system (caused by each user).

Are these sufficient??:
	CPU*memory integral
	On-line terminal session time

Should we instead of CPU*memory use separate CPU-time and memory?

Should we also keep track of
	I/O operations
	NFS load (operations performed by nfds), and how can we do this?

I would certainly appreciate an answer on these (for me difficult and important)
issues.

Best regards, 

Herold Myrland
Manager of FUNN-Narvik as (Norwegian R&D Networ, Narvik)

E-mail : hm@fna.no
From: wjk@Phonogenic.COM (Bill Keenan)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs
Subject: What NFS packages for Windows 3.1/DOS 5.0 are shipping?
Date: 6 Sep 92 05:42:44 GMT
Reply-To: wjk@Phonogenic.COM (Bill Keenan)
Organization: Phonogenic Systems Corporation
X-Mailer: uAccess - Macintosh Release: 1.6v1

I am trying to select an NFS package for use on 386/486 machines
running Windows 3.1 w/ DOS 5.0. I have been trying to get product info
and/or an evaluation copy of each package I learn about. So far, I know
of 5 packages (ftp's, B&W's, PC-NFS, Super TCP, Chameleon) which may or
may not work WELL with Windows.

I should appreciate knowing about any packages (publisher, phone number,
address, etc.) which are available. I should also like any praises or
flames for these packages in the Windows 3.1 environment.

The plan is to use the selected package with an NE2100 compatible
Ethernet interface. Any opinions on this interface should also be
welcome.

Bill

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Keenan
Internet:	wjk@phonogenic.com -or- phngnc!wjk
AppleLink:	wjk@phonogenic.com@INTERNET#
CompuServe:	>INTERNET:wjk@phonogenic.com
Phonogenic Systems Corporation - Phone 415/365-1083 - FAX 415/365-1083
PO Box 3535, Redwood City CA 94064

Rudman - Tsongas '96 on the Republocatic ticket
Politicians working together for fiscal responsibility! This country
borrows about $4.25 per day per US resident (that is $21/day for a
family of 4) with little hope of paying any of the principle!
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs
From: mogul@pa.dec.com (Jeffrey Mogul)
Subject: Re: Juszczak's reply cache article needed
Organization: DEC Western Research
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 92 00:11:55 GMT

Here's the citation information that I have used:
@InProceedings(Juszczak1989,
        Author="Chet Juszczak",
        Key="Juszczak",
        Title="Improving the Performance and Correctness of an NFS Server",
        BookTitle="Proc. Winter 1989 USENIX Conference",
        Address="San Diego",
        Pages="53-63",
        Month="February",
        Year="1989")

-Jeff
From: ccaajmf@ucl.ac.uk (John Franks)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs
Subject: PC-NFS & MS-DOS ASSIGN
Date: 8 Sep 92 10:02:04 GMT
Organization: Bloomsbury Computing Consortium, London

I'm having trouble with PC-NFS crashing my computer if I even run the "assign"
command. This wouldn't be a problem (use subst) except that I have to have
a partitioned hard disk, taking C: and D:, but for historical reasons, I want
to have D: mounted over PC-NFS and probably E: redirected to the real D:. 
	I can do the second half, but without ASSIGN I can't get D: to be a 
PC-NFS mounted drive. 

	So, I'm after any ideas on getting around this, or avoiding the problem
with "assign". 

	Help . . .

P.S. Yes, I've tried every combination of join/subst I can think of. No luck.


John Franks             I will arise and go now, for always night and day
ccaajmf@ucl.ac.uk       I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; 
& jmf14@phx.cam.ac.uk   While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavments grey,
   from Cambridge only  I hear it in the deep heart's core.
From: tso@cephalo.neusc.bcm.tmc.edu (Dan Ts'o)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs
Subject: PC-NFS Message #??? ?
Date: 6 Sep 1992 23:27:03 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Baylor College of Medicine, Houston,Tx


	I keep getting these PC-NFS Message #??? for PC-NFS 4.0a. I assume it
means a missing error message file. What is the meaning and cure ?
	Please email. Thanks.
				Cheers,
				Dan Ts'o		212-327-7671
				Dept. Neurobiology	dan@rna.rockefeller.edu
				Rockefeller Univ.	...s5!rna!dan
				1230 York Ave.		tso@rockvax.bitnet
				NY, NY 10021

Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs,comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc,comp.dcom.lans.ethernet
From: shj@ultra.com (Steve Jay {Ultra Unix SW Mgr})
Subject: Re: Sun <=> PC Transfer Rate (Summary)
Organization: Ultra Network Technologies
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 92 20:51:26 GMT

vjs@rhyolite.wpd.sgi.com (Vernon Schryver) writes:

>Sun continues to promise that real soon they will turn on UDP checksums
>by default.  That may have already happened.

UDP checksums are on by default in Solaris 2.0.


Steve Jay
shj@ultra.com  ...ames!ultra!shj
Ultra Network Technologies / 101 Dagget Drive / San Jose, CA 95134 / USA
(408) 922-0100 x130	"Home of the 1 Gigabit/Second network"
From: tom@rsp.UUCP (Thomas Ruf)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs
Subject: Re: Sun <=> PC Transfer Rate (Summary)
Date: 10 Sep 92 23:52:57 GMT
Organization: RSP Datensysteme, W-Germany

eengelke@sail.uwaterloo.ca (Erick Engelke) writes:

>>I've gotten as high as 5megabits/second using a 50Mhz 486DX box with a 16 
>>bit WD board using the same software and packet driver.
>That is about the limit of the current ISA ethernet hardware and packet
>drivers.  3Com's new (unreleased) cards should up that by 25% to 50%.
>On a different ISA network card we get 850 KB/s, but you really start
>hitting the hardware bus limitations.
Can't agree here: a good Ethernet card on ISA (e.g. our LANCE based cards)
can saturate an Ethernet and of course also receive at the same rate.
If you assume that ISA has a bandwidth of
about 4MB/s, the CPU has still about 70% of time available for the
packet driver and TCP/IP protocol processing. So the limitation
is probably not the bus but the cpu.

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Ruf	tom@rsp.de	Schneider & Koch GmbH
{uunet,mcvax}!unido!rsp!tom	Germany
From: Gary.Woodman@anu.edu.au (Gary Woodman)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs
Subject: Re: Ctrl-P key confusing to PC-NFS?
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 03:35:41 GMT
Organization: Computer Services Centre, Australian National University
NNTP-Posting-Host: gurrung.anu.edu.au

In article <1992Sep3.210602.344@infolog.se> rabbe@infolog.se (Rabbe Fogelholm) writes:

>fine, but there is some conflict between the Ctrl-P key and the PC-NFS
>setup. When I use emacs on a remote host via a telnet session, nothing
>happens when I push Ctrl-P. Instead, when I have closed the telnet
>session and I am back in MS-DOS, I get a message complaining about
>"device PRN" (I think it was) and an "Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail" prompt.
>
>Is this because of some ancient feature of DOS (I use MS-DOS 3.30)?

No; this feature is in all versions of DOS. It logs everything on stdout to 
the standard printer PRN:

>part of Kermit (MS-Kermit 2.26), accessing the COM1 port, there is no
>problem with Ctrl-P, though.

There you go - Kermit doesn't use stdout, PC-NFS telnet apparently does. 
Solution in the next message.

--
Gary.Woodman@anu.edu.au         This post made from 100% recycled electrons.
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs
From: aga@Comtech.com (Alan G. Arndt)
Subject: Sun PC-NFS performance ??
Organization: Comtech Labs Inc.
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 23:51:30 GMT

Ok all this discussion about 850-1000Kbytes a second has me curious.
I have always used the WD/SMC supplied drivers written for PC-NFS.  The
BEST I can get in performance is around 250Kbytes a second.  I do seem to
recall that this was higher with more nfsd's on the sever but not
significantly.  This is a lightly loaded E-Net with ONE SS1+ as the server
and a bunch of PC's as clients.  The PC's are using WD/SMC 8013 16 bit
cards and some of the PC's are 486/50's.  And the 486/50's aren't any
faster than the 386/33's.

Should I be using a Packet Driver?  Are they faster?  More optimized for
the application or what?  I always assumed that was adding things I really
didn't need (as we ONLY run PC-NFS) and wouldn't be as fast.

----
Alan Arndt					Comtech Labs
415-813-4500					4005 Miranda Avenue, Suite 150
aga@Comtech.com					Palo Alto, CA   94304-1218
From: raboud@esmlsun (R.A. Raboud, Jr.)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs
Subject: Cabletron addresses?????
Date: 15 Sep 92 16:07:08 GMT
Organization: GTRI

does anybody have an email or ftp address for cabletron?????

thanks in advance
robert
----------------------------------------------------------------------
R.A. Raboud, Jr -- Georgia Tech Research Institute
GTRI/ESML - CRB 484a - (404) 853-9136
robert.raboud@gtri.gatech.edu
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs
From: vjs@rhyolite.wpd.sgi.com (Vernon Schryver)
Subject: Re: on.c source
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.  Mountain View, CA
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 17:46:29 GMT

In article <4074@svin09.info.win.tue.nl>, wswietse@wsbs06.bs.win.tue.nl (Wietse Venema) writes:
> andyp@shared.COM (Andy Pardue) writes:
> 
> >I am trying to locate source for the 'on' command.  I have done some poking
> >around at various ftp sites but am obviously missing something.  Any help
> >will be appreciated.
> 
> The on/rexd protocol is as secure as a wildcard in your hosts.equiv file.
> Be careful.


Nice analogy, but wouldn't a wild card in /.rhosts be more similar to rexd?


Vernon Schryver,  vjs@sgi.com

P.S. The "Distribution: comp" line in your article probably undesirably
    restricted its distribution.
From: vander@flab.fujitsu.co.jp (Mike van der Velden)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs
Subject: Re: NFS Protocol Specification
Date: 14 Sep 92 10:19:54 GMT
Followup-To: comp.protocols.nfs
Organization: Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd., Kawasaki, Japan

In article <VANDER.92Sep10173409@vancouver.stars.flab.Fujitsu.co.jp> vander@flab.fujitsu.co.jp (Mike van der Velden) writes:
> 
> But, before I start, I'd like to solicit opinions from the net.  I'm
> willing to summarize for the net if there is wide-spread interest

Many people have expressed interest, so I'll post a summary near the
end of this week, or at the start of next week.


> 1>  What would you do to improve the protocol?  Forgetting all about
>     backwards compatibility, would there be any specific functions that
>     you would add/remove/modify?  How about the arguments used by the
>     protocol?


Thanks to all who have responded so far.  I've tried replying to each
of you individually, but I'm having trouble with the mail system
today, so my apologies for the delay.  Tomorrow is a holiday here, so
I probably won't be able to get back to you until Wednesday.  Anyway,
some interesting trends are developing.  People generally have similar
comments, except for two issues on which people are about evenly
divided: 

a>  Should the server be stateful or stateless?  
b>  Should the protocol provide a mechanism for locking files (or
    parts of files)?

If you have any more comments on these issues, I'd be interested in
hearing them.

Here is a brief synopsis on some other points raised:
   - data size should be > 8K.
   - a connection based transport is more desirable than UDP.
   - clients should cache files, or parts of files.
   - Unix file view should be extended, perhaps incorporating space
     for uninterpreted meta-data.
   - security should be improved.

Again, any other opinions you might have on these or other issues are
welcome.  Thanks in advance for your time.


--
Mike van der Velden
Distributed Systems Laboratory, Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd., Kawasaki, Japan
e-mail: vander@tokyo.hi.flab.fujitsu.co.jp

ps. If you send me a picture postcard      Mike van der Velden
    from your area to the address at       Fujitsu Unoki Dormitory, room 227
    right, I'll send you one from Tokyo.   2-17-18 Unoki, Ota-ku, Tokyo 146
    Postcards must be received by          Japan
    November 15, 1992