joseph@rutgers.rutgers.edu (Seymour Joseph) (04/03/91)
A brief review of InterConUs NFS/Share version 1.0: Price quoted: $206.50 INTRODUCTION: InterCon recently sent me a 30 day evaluation copy of their NFS for Macintosh product called NFS/Share. (Thank you Jim Geddes) This product, working with AppleUs MacTCP software, allows your Mac to mount and use remote disk volumes via Sun MicrosystemsU NFS protocols. INITIAL IMPRESSION: Damn, it works! REVIEW: The actual software is a 129k chooser document. Installation is trivial, just throw it in your system folder and reboot. If you donUt already have MacTCP installed they also include it and a small NFS test utility. During the installation, I encountered some problems with INIT conflicts: NFS/Share conflicts with the Timbuktu remote control software from CE software. You must rename NFS/Share to load after Timbuktu in order to get both products to function. Some other common INIT conflicts are covered in the manual. Once it is installed, you must configure it. If you have never dealt with MacTCP before, configuring it can be quite a bear. The NFS/Share configuration itself is not too complex but far from intuitive. The manual included with this software is over 40 pages in length and includes both a glossary and index. Unfortunately the writing is not as clear as I have come to expect from Macintosh product manuals. Illustrations are mixed up, incomplete sentences and other errors abound, and many areas are not covered with the deserved depth. This is not a product to be installed and configured by a novice. The ideal installer would know Macs, TCP/IP, NFS and NIS (YP). Once the product is installed on the Macintosh, the user must work with a network administrator to set up a NIS(YP) server for user authentication and then must arrange with a UNIX system administrator to be given NFS mount privileges on that host. Setup is much more complex than setting up an account on an AppleShare server. After the software is installed and configured, and the NIS(YP), and NFS hosts are all set up, you can get started using NFS/Share. The NFS/Share manual, in its introduction, claims: R If you are familiar with using AppleShare, you should have the basic skills necessary to begin using NFS/Share.S My initial experiences with NFS/Share belie that assertion. I have been an AppleShare user and System Administrator since the product was first released, and the NFS/Share dialogs and their function are not clear, nor are they very similar to AppleShareUs. I ended up doing my initial connection with manual-in-hand; not a very RMacintoshS experience at all. On the Macintosh desktop, NFS/Share acts pretty much like a single user hard disk. Once mounted, an NFS/Share volume did become the natural Macintosh tool I expected. NFS/Share can be set to store its files as AppleSingle or AppleDouble files with AppleDouble as the default. I could find no way to set file protections (AppleShare calls them file privileges) through NFS/Share. The Get privileges command in the Finder was disabled and there seemed to be no other mechanism provided. I did some primitive benchmarks to show relative speed between NFS/Share and alternatives readily available here. For my test I used the Macintosh finder to drag copy a folder approximately 1.4 Megabytes in size. This folder contained 26 files. None of the destination servers were local to my network so these time reflect gateway delays as well as server performance. This is probably most significant for the LocalTalk based AppleShare server Relative times were: Duplicate folder on local Hard disk 0:19:82 (Approx. 20 seconds) Folder copied to: EtherTalk AppleShare Server 0:38:64 EtherTalk AUFS (UNIX CAP service) 0:41:98 InterCon NFS/Share volume 1:07:84 IPTalk AUFS (UNIX CAP service) 1:44:28 LocalTalk AppleShare Server 2:15:82 I experienced several unusual hangs and crashes while configuring and using NFS/Share. I cannot positively identify it as the culprit, some more subtle INIT or memory conflict might be at fault. I also noticed many, not so subtle, violations of AppleUs user interface guidelines. If it is having trouble communicating with a NIS or NFS host, NFS/Share will occasionally hang your machine for up to three minutes (it seems like an eternity) without switching the cursor to the little watch icon, or giving any other indication that it is doing anything. Dialog boxes have default buttons that are activated by pressing return, but these buttons are not highlighted in the dialog, and donUt give any feedback when selected in this manner. SUMMARY: InterConUs NFS/Share is a neat product with surprising functionality that is still in a relatively early stage of release. It has lots of rough edges, but if you need its functionality, they can be pretty much ignored once you get it up and running. With continued commitment from Intercon, it could easily mature into a very valuable addition to the growing arsenal of Macintosh internetworking tools. Seymour Joseph Rutgers University Network Research/LCSR
jpm@cs.hut.fi (Jussi-Pekka Mantere) (04/05/91)
In article <Apr.2.19.58.12.1991.4625@dorm.rutgers.edu> joseph@rutgers.rutgers.edu (Seymour Joseph) writes:
A brief review of InterConUs NFS/Share version 1.0:
Thank You! Great to see this kind of stuff appearing on the net!
A question about NFS/Share: does it support printing from a UNIX host
(via remote lpr or whatever) to a PostScript printer accessible to a
Macintosh (via the Macintosh)? A la Wollongong's PathWay?
Chapeanders@verity.com (Anders Wallgren) (04/05/91)
In article <JPM.91Apr5005036@sauna.hut.fi>, jpm@cs (Jussi-Pekka Mantere) writes: >A question about NFS/Share: does it support printing from a UNIX host >(via remote lpr or whatever) to a PostScript printer accessible to a >Macintosh (via the Macintosh)? A la Wollongong's PathWay? > No.