lyndon@cs.AthabascaU.CA (Lyndon Nerenberg) (01/16/90)
In article <12938@watcgl.waterloo.edu> idallen@watcgl.waterloo.edu (Ian! D. Allen [CGL]) writes: >We've had no success trying to do software development over NFS. You >can run applications over NFS, since all they have to do is load over >the net once; but, the compile/edit/test cycle involves too many file >accesses. A compile or "make" can reference dozens of files, and the >network overhead getting at each file was too much. We gave it up and >don't use NFS for much more than moving things from far away to local >disk where we can work on it. This sounds like a configuration problem, not an NFS problem. For the last year I have been doing software development via NFS, first with a VAXstation 2000 served by a Sun 3/160, and now with a SPARCstation I served by a 3/160 and a 4/370. The VS2000 is not a fast machine in any way, shape or form, yet I experienced very few problems with NFS. I have compiled smail 3.1, TeX, large parts of the 4.3 source tree, etc., with no difficulty. Have you adjusted the retry, timeout, and write-size values for your NFS mounts? Given enough wobbling of these parameters I have been able to sucessfully use a 3b2 (!!) as an NFS server. -- Lyndon Nerenberg VE6BBM / Computing Services / Athabasca University {alberta,decwrl}!atha!lyndon || lyndon@cs.AthabascaU.CA UREP: Peru in disguise?
D. Allen [CGL]) (01/19/90)
In article <1425@atha.AthabascaU.CA> lyndon@cs.AthabascaU.CA (Lyndon Nerenberg) writes: >Have you adjusted the retry, timeout, and write-size values for your >NFS mounts? Given enough wobbling of these parameters I have been able >to sucessfully use a 3b2 (!!) as an NFS server. With what performance penalty, compared to running a "make" with the files available locally? Running a "make" on our VS3200/3.0 served by our unloaded VAX8600/BSD4.3 took at least twice as long as running it with all the files on the VS3200 itself. Are you saying you can "tweak" this down to something more reasonable? Examples? -- -IAN! (Ian! D. Allen) idallen@watcgl.uwaterloo.ca idallen@watcgl.waterloo.edu [129.97.128.64] Computer Graphics Lab/University of Waterloo/Ontario/Canada