karen@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Karen Turner) (01/18/88)
I am working on a file server for a heterogeneous network that will allow the sharing of files between different types of machines (by appropriately transforming the files). A simple case of this is text files. I was wondering how NFS handles this. With PC/NFS how does the client on the PC handle mappings to and from CR/LF (otherwise how can you read UNIX text files from the PC?). If mappings are done how are text and binary files distinguished? What would happen if a binary file from the PC, that had a LF in it, was moved to a file system mounted from a sun and then moved back again? NFS is designed for a non-homogeneous network, how does it handle mappings from a server that does not use text files that have lines delimited by LFs. Thanks Karen -- 'So long and thanks for all the fish' - Douglas Adams UUCP: ...!uunet!vuwcomp!karen Domain(ish): karen@comp.vuw.ac.nz
sxn%ingersoll@Sun.COM (Stephen X. Nahm) (01/23/88)
In article <13212@comp.vuw.ac.nz> karen@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Karen Turner) writes: >With PC/NFS how does the client on the PC handle mappings to and from CR/LF >(otherwise how can you read UNIX text files from the PC?). On PC-NFS, a utility is provided to translate text files back and forth between MS-DOS style (CR/LF) and UNIX style (LF). No translation is done on during any data transfers (read/write). Thus, if a text file is created by PC-NFS on a UNIX machine, it will have the CR/LF style. If a UNIX user wants to use this file, the translation utility would be used first to convert it to UNIX style. Similarly, if the MS-DOS user wants to look at a UNIX text file, he or she will use a DOS version of the same utility on the file. NFS assumes that there are smart clients and "dumb" servers. Never expect the server to do anything fancy like this for you. However, if your client is clever enough to distinguish text files from binary files (through some feat of magic), there's certainly nothing wrong with training it to do the translation on the fly. But it probably won't be easy to get right in the general case. -- Steve Nahm sxn@sun.COM or sun!sxn