hans@nlgvax.UUCP (Hans Zuidam) (07/06/88)
On Mon Jun 27 asked for experience with using an A2000 and Ameristar's Ethernet/NFS package using a Sun as fileserver for software development purposes. Here is a summary of answers I received: -------------------------------- Date: Wed, 29 Jun 88 11:41:19 BST From: Roger Henry <philmds!cs.nott.ac.uk!prlb2!rbh> Subject: Amigas and Ethernet I have read the release 2 documentation, but I believe that release 3 software is imminent. One problem we have noted is to do with the insecurity of NFS. Apparently, a script file on the amiga is used to claim a uid and gid when accessing unix. Thus a student who discovered this could easily claim to be someone else! -------------------------------- Date: 28 Jun 88 20:20:57 GMT From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) Subject: Re: Amigas and Ethernet In article <228@nlgvax.UUCP> hans@nlgvax.UUCP (Hans Zuidam) writes: > Has someone experience with using an A2000 and Ameristar's Ethernet/NFS > package using a Sun as fileserver for software development purposes. Do it all the time. > . Can I run without a local harddisk? (but use two floppies) Yes, the Amiga 2000 I have is set up with two floppies and 3 MB of ram. It used to have one floppy and that worked fine as well but running diskcopy was a pain :-) > . How much memory do you need? (2MB, 4MB, more :-) ) I use 3Mb and that is fine, haven't tried it with 1Mb but the internet stuff is pretty tight code so I don't think it would take to long. > . Do GURUs have impact on the Suns? No. Since NFS is stateless no activity on the client can disturb the filesystem of the server. > . How easy is it to configure/maintain? There was a brief period while I was figuring out which machine I wanted to mount and how to set up some routes to it, but after that I put the stuff into my startup-sequence and forgot about it. The only "problem" on the horizon is that 1.3 uses a bunch of the file protection bits and these don't map well to UNIX protection bits so after copying a file from the NFS disk to the floppy you may find it protected from Delete. -------------------------------- Date: Tue, 28 Jun 88 10:06:24 EDT From: philmds!mcvax!sbcs!root Subject: Re: A2000 & NFS Hi. I can answer some of your technical questions: 1. GURU's on the Amiga do not impact the NFS servers at all. The worst that happens is you just reboot and remount the filesystem. 2. You can run entirely without harddisk. For development, I set up a boot floppy that just mounts a few filesystems using NFS, and then reassigns C:, etc. Works just fine. 3. NFS will run on a "bare" Amiga, ie no extra ram. If you're doing development you may want to buy extra ram even if you do not buy NFS, etc. 4. Ease of use & configurability - will leave answers to this to our customers. We've sold a few hundred boards + software packages, so I suspect it is pretty easy to use :-). Rick Spanbauer SUNY/Stony Brook (& Ameristar) -------------------------------- Date: Tue, 28 Jun 88 13:53:56 PDT From: philmds!mcvax!devvax.Jpl.Nasa.Gov!min (Min-Kun Chung) Subject: Re: A2000 & NFS >Has someone experience with using an A2000 and Ameristar's Ethernet/NFS >package using a Sun as fileserver for software development purposes. > Yes, the Ameristar's Ethernet card will work fine for your purpose. > . Can I run without a local harddisk? (but use two floppies) Yes, we do not have a hard drive either currently. One can configure such that all the workbench and important files are on Sun's disk through the ethernet via NFS. > . How much memory do you need? (2MB, 4MB, more :-) ) We have 2MB. This seems plenty. > . Do GURUs have impact on the Suns? Works fine. > . How easy is it to configure/maintain? Very simple if you follow the instructions. (Use X.X.0.0 as subnet instead of X.X.X.0) -- Min-Kun Chung (818)354-1426, Jet Propulsion Laboratory Uucp: {sdcrdcf,bellcore,ihnp4}!psivax!jplpro!min Uucp: jplgodo!chas2!jplpro!min Arpa: ...jplpro!min@cit-vax.ARPA -------------------------------- Date: Thu, 30 Jun 88 00:03:34 PDT From: philmds!mcvax!boing!dale (Dale Luck) Subject: Re: A2000 & NFS It works great, you never have to worry about corrupting your file system. > . Can I run without a local harddisk? (but use two floppies) Yes, it is easy. All you need is the handler and a few programs on the wb disk and jump right over to the nfs: > . How much memory do you need? (2MB, 4MB, more :-) ) Works fine with only 1m of memory. > . Do GURUs have impact on the Suns? Guru's have no known detrimental affect on the server, the amiga reboots and reattaches itself without problems. Tested on Sun3's and sun2's and vax's. > . How easy is it to configure/maintain? Fairly easy to maintain, Ameristars documentation is not a complete tutorial on networking but it is ok. Personal experience? I don't know how we got along without it. I have an implementation of X11 Windows that is presently in alpha testing that uses their tcp/ip package. Dale -- Dale Luck Boing, Inc. {cbmvax|oliveb|pyramid}|!amiga!boing!dale Although I do contract work for Amiga-LosGatos, my opinions probably don't represent those of Commodore or its management or its engineers, but I think the world would be a better place if they did. -------------------------------- Thans for responding! -- Hans Zuidam E-Mail: hans@nlgvax.UUCP Philips Data Systems, Tel: +31 40 892288 Projecten Centrum Geldrop, Building XR Willem Alexanderlaan 7B, 5664 AN Geldrop The Netherlands