[comp.sys.ibm.pc.rt] /native

barron@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Daniel P. Barron) (05/18/89)

Help!  Why does my RT (AIX 2.2.1) create the /native directory under the
root and them mount the entire root filesystem there?  It never did this
before, as far as I know.  The commands are in the /etc/rc file.  Did some
LPP put these commands in and if so, why.  I've installed DOS Access,
Network Filesystems, and Distributed Services.  Are one of these the culprit?

Any help would be appreciated.

db


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| Daniel P. Barron            | E-Mail to:                            |
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drake@ibmarc.uucp (Sam Drake/99999999) (05/19/89)

In an environment where you are using NFS or DS to overmount lots
of files from remote systems, it's sometimes desirable to be able 
to have access to the files that you've mounted over.  By taking 
all local filesystems and putting them in /native, you can always
get to them if you so choose.  If you normally remote mount a 
directory but want to have a local copy in case the server goes
down, it's convenient to be able to make the local copy by issuing
"cp /a/b/c/* /native/a/b/c".

The /native stuff is in the base AIX 2.2 product.

Another reason for it is that there's no reason for "skulker" to
go cleaning up remotely mounted filesystems...if you have a file
server with 50 clients, you don't need to have 50 systems banging
on the server at 3am trying to clean up .bak files etc...one will
do just fine.  So skulker cleans up /native, not /, and thus doesn't
get any remote mounted directories or files.  (The "skulker" program
is run by cron at 3am to perform various cleanup functions.)

I'm not in AIX development, just an AIX user, and I'm speaking for
myself, not for IBM.  Nothing I say is accurate.  :-)

Sam Drake / IBM Almaden Research Center 
VNET:      DRAKE at ALMADEN       BITNET:  DRAKE at ALMVMA
Internet:  drake@ibm.com          UUCP:    uunet!ibmarc!drake
Phone:     (408) 927-1861         IBM Tieline: 457-1861

bunda@cs.utexas.edu (John Bunda) (05/19/89)

In article <11198@netnews.upenn.edu>, barron@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Daniel P. Barron) writes:
> Help!  Why does my RT (AIX 2.2.1) create the /native directory under the
> root and them mount the entire root filesystem there?  It never did this
> before, as far as I know.  The commands are in the /etc/rc file.  Did some
> LPP put these commands in and if so, why.  I've installed DOS Access,
> Network Filesystems, and Distributed Services.  Are one of these the culprit?

Yes, DS does this, though why it does it for every file system I really
don't know.  The idea is to always give you a path to your native
file systems even if you presently have them shadowed by another mount.
You can ignore them, and I don't think it will hurt if you delete 
the mounts from your rc file, but be careful.

-John



-- 
...................................
John Bunda            UT CS Dept.      
bunda@cs.utexas.edu   Austin, Texas