fnf@unisoft.UUCP (Fred Fish) (01/09/85)
From UNIX REVIEW, Jan 1985, page 73: "Sun would like to see its network become the industry standard. It hopes to ensure that other companies adopt it by publishing the protocol specifications for the entire NFS system and giving away source code for all its portable parts (the parts that are not operating system dependent)." Could someone from Sun Microsystems comment on this? When can I expect it to show up in net.sources? If this is true it could be a very crafty move on their part.
grunwald@uiucdcsb.UUCP (01/11/85)
When Bill Joy was at the University of Illinois giving a sales pitch for Sun
Workstations to our physics department, I had the chance to ask him what
Remote Procedure Call protocol they were going to be using as their
standard at Sun Microsystems.
He said that they had initially considered the Courier Protocol, but had
decided to design their own due to limitations on data types and data type
specification in Courier.
He stated that the description of this protocol would be broadcast over
Usenet when it was completed. It was supposed to have been done last summer
sometime, but I have yet to see mention of it anywhere. This is unfortunate,
since I need to choose an RPC mechanism for an implementation of a distributed
programming language, and I would have preferred to use one which was already
in use. If anyone hears any more about this, please send me mail about it.
Dirk Grunwald
University of Illinois, UIUC
grunwald@uiuc.csnet
grunwald@uiuc.arpa
{uiucdcs, ihnp4} ! uiucdcs ! grunwald.usenetshannon@sun.uucp (Bill Shannon) (01/13/85)
> From UNIX REVIEW, Jan 1985, page 73: > > "Sun would like to see its network become the industry > standard. It hopes to ensure that other companies > adopt it by publishing the protocol specifications > for the entire NFS system and giving away source > code for all its portable parts (the parts that are > not operating system dependent)." > > Could someone from Sun Microsystems comment on this? When > can I expect it to show up in net.sources? If this is true > it could be a very crafty move on their part. Let me clarify what part of the NFS Sun will publish. Sun's NFS protocol is built on top of Sun's RPC (Remote Procedure Call) protocol, which uses Sun's XDR (eXternal Data Representation) format to represent the arguments to the remote procedure calls. Sun will publish the specifications for the NFS protocol, the RPC protocol, and XDR. In addition, Sun will publish the source code for the user-level libraries that implement RPC and XDR. As to when these specs will be published, I can't say for sure. I suspect it will be after our 2.0 release, which is the first release containing the NFS. 2.0 is currently scheduled for release on April 15. When we do publish the specs and source code, we hope to send them to net.sources. We are also considering other publication channels. The user-level RPC library should allow other people to write applications using RPC. In combination with the NFS spec, you should be able to implement user-mode NFS servers and clients on other 4.2BSD systems. In addition, they should provide a useful model for people who want to implement NFS compatible functionality in non-UNIX operating systems. Sun's NFS implementation resides in the UNIX kernel and uses a kernel-level version of the RPC library. The kernel RPC library is not generally useful and will not be published. Also, the NFS implementation required numerous changes to the 4.2BSD kernel. These changes will not be published. Sun is exploring ways of licensing our entire NFS implementation to other computer vendors who want to provide NFS compatible systems. Look for more details at the upcoming UniForum and Usenix conferences in Dallas. Bill Shannon Sun Microsystems, Inc.