bob@allosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield) (10/20/88)
(Though this started in comp.sys.next, I'll add comp.protocols.nfs, since that is probably an appropriate forum for this.) In article <1540@xyzzy.UUCP> lucovsky@dg-rtp.dg.com (Jeff Lucovsky) writes: >In article <24828@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> bob@allosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield) writes: >>The question remains: What version of NFS does NeXT already have? >>Have they got diskless NFS booting? How soon will they have the >>automounter and all the other nifties in the version shipping with >>SunOS 4.0? Has Sun even started shipping source to their developer >>source licensees? > >Sun has made source for their Vax reference port available since >early May of this year. My thinking about NFS versions was apparently both muddled and uninformed - not an unusual state for me :-). I received some very helpful (to me, anyway) clarifications from someone at Sun who is In The Know about NFS, who said that I could share them. How about an informed word about diskless NFS booting on the NeXT cube? From: cs@Sun.COM (Carl Smith) To: bob@allosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu Subject: Re: optical disk? diskless? distribution? Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View >The question remains: What version of NFS does NeXT already have? I'm trying very hard to squash this misunderstanding. Everyone (repeat, everyone) has the same version of NFS. There is only one version of NFS available at this time. No one (repeat, no one) runs anything other than NFS version 2. If the question is about what features are present in NeXT's implementation of NFS version 2, please state it that way so you don't lead the masses astray. > Has Sun even started shipping source to their developer source licensees? NFS source for developers is different from SunOS source. Every supported developer has already received the NFSSRC tape based on SunOS 4.0. Naturally, we aren't allowed to say whether NeXT is one of those companies. Carl From: bob@allosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield) To: cs@Sun.COM Subject: Re: optical disk? diskless? distribution? Carl, Thanks for the note - it certainly fixes a misunderstanding or two. Since you're "trying very hard to squash this misunderstanding", may I (or would you) post this information to comp.protocols.nfs and comp.sys.next? The version that people are running (you say everyone runs version 2) may be different from what you're shipping now. In particular, other NFS server vendors have complained that Sun has been tardy in shipping NFS sources to their vendor source licensees, so that they could get their own products up to where they could serve as a diskless boot server for SunOS 4.0. Is that considered a new version of NFS itself, or just new services atop NFS? I understand that you can't say what you've licensed to whom, and I certainly can't fault you (much :-) for not letting the new sources out the door until you're shipping a product based on it yourself, but it would really help if you could straighten things out regarding what we're hearing from others! Again, thanks for the note. I've always been impressed with the level of class and cooperativeness when I get to talk to someone within Sun! --Bob To: bob@allosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield) Subject: Re: optical disk? diskless? distribution? From: cs%kanawha@Sun.COM Since NFS is just another RPC service (all of which have their own version numbers), we try very hard to make sure that people realize the potential for confusion in saying things like ``We run NFS version 3'' when they really mean that they run an NFS based on the NFSSRC 3.0 tape, which in turn was ported from SunOS 3.0. Changes such as those in SunOS 4.0 (e.g., the bootparam daemon or diskless NFS) are simply new RPC services or new features built on top of the same old version of the NFS RPC service. Feel free to post corrections to comp.sys.next (I haven't seen a similar article in comp.protocols.nfs - perhaps I'm behind). The reason the NFSSRC releases seem to lag behind SunOS releases is simple: bugs. The NFSSRC tapes are ported to a 4.3BSD VAX, and often some interesting bugs pop up that don't appear on most of the machines here (e.g., byte ordering inconsistencies). Also, this version of NFSSRC was delayed so that bug fixes that are being made to SunOS could be put into NFSSRC as well. In this case, NFSSRC 4.0 actually contains some bug fixes that SunOS customers won't see until SunOS 4.0.1 (only just in the process of being released). Stay tuned for the NFS protocol rev, which will likely be released first in NFSSRC format. Carl -=- Zippy sez, --Bob . I want a COLOR T.V. and a VIBRATING BED!!!