From owner-freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Mon Jun 20 21:05:32 2016 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-fs@mailman.ysv.freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by mailman.ysv.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4C8E6AC47B0; Mon, 20 Jun 2016 21:05:32 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from zbeeble@gmail.com) Received: from mail-yw0-x230.google.com (mail-yw0-x230.google.com [IPv6:2607:f8b0:4002:c05::230]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 (128/128 bits)) (Client CN "smtp.gmail.com", Issuer "Google Internet Authority G2" (verified OK)) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 0E1C729C6; Mon, 20 Jun 2016 21:05:32 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from zbeeble@gmail.com) Received: by mail-yw0-x230.google.com with SMTP id i12so37812897ywa.1; Mon, 20 Jun 2016 14:05:32 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=mime-version:from:date:message-id:subject:to; bh=zhxF3O3Z4/iFA/VXcurrF8ydkC4MdzPnyxlEFUiqBd8=; b=ZogEQ7KHgt6uN8lDT8KBROYkdr5lU+YJoB7uM+wSvFTL5p4zKK7lrI3MGdTmHHidCQ 1+ewLZY8+ba8i7WULExMGIztbBMJwfvBPBbnhkACWWYVQSJwKZ8mFrtGV8KPs2sVEjya HmW8ZxpWXzINlejrmBbmAatukz0VqAPWColP2XKoikKp3jLKgvHgaS3nynpa/bL47Tev 83/gFIPjdocfCJ3MGk+EU5is2kct3HqFc0qC9l15axKWlAAedOD80FyxxI0nBYB1pmrP BBN1GgbM4Aj8o+g69QDJuZfmZIGUk0zx4jMqH+QBazbLajSV1z725xSm57T/mZz17hpF U8qg== X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20130820; h=x-gm-message-state:mime-version:from:date:message-id:subject:to; bh=zhxF3O3Z4/iFA/VXcurrF8ydkC4MdzPnyxlEFUiqBd8=; b=AHlF6KhuxWSKL4BYHmnBVCuGPl/4ur44rIPTQzQ/U4F3wTroveoexoWiiB1+AM223F 7KH0v04su2FESbxfOKaPHdQv0AiLMDNqruPmWYn//DHkkyrIMhVpSF5tkZw2YJMRFC1T TxmR2+fObPp/BxRj2fNYwEguzpi16mjtDq1ym/EmDYiekX5EI/rrd8HrOvYilFxO4jpV ZGZh3OB0+o/RxWjeI1jtmO94cNalImUYSU9GW1sTn38FrO20eOdWBkpcCcvIsc98bU4w 53tw528k4xZWhZV0AOiNlU6tKA3/vzOBFCGmiQ/QxJykUUu4OBxGYcKSAcD770blfoX0 Mbsw== X-Gm-Message-State: ALyK8tIaAGLTj6PMHbsc0U71wcs4JJQJzebr6VCdJ9dyBhXF6Yw2KmJ5+/2HNHX2SRU94hUJgm59tylMCWetRQ== X-Received: by 10.13.221.204 with SMTP id g195mr5655025ywe.238.1466456731187; Mon, 20 Jun 2016 14:05:31 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.37.27.130 with HTTP; Mon, 20 Jun 2016 14:05:30 -0700 (PDT) From: Zaphod Beeblebrox Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2016 17:05:30 -0400 Message-ID: Subject: The small installations network filesystem and users. To: freebsd-fs , FreeBSD Hackers Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.22 X-BeenThere: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.22 Precedence: list List-Id: Filesystems List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2016 21:05:32 -0000 Correct me if I'm wrong, but amidst discussions of pNFS (among other things) I thought I should bring up something someone said to me: and that is (to quote him) "using NFS is too hard, I always fail." I can empathize (although I know better) with this statement. I've been using NFS since v2 was a "new thing." Rick Maclem was the sysadmin at my University. So here's the thing. SMB is easier to implement than NFSv4. NFSv3 is easier to implement than v4. In general, even though I know what is required, I implement SMB or v3 rather than v4... which means I'm better off than my friend: he just does without network filesystems. Back-in-the-day, (1995-ish) I worked for an outfit that released on some 30 odd platforms including VMS. We had /d// mounted on every machine. Besides the fact that power outages were a bit of a nightmare (many machines didn't recover well if their NFS imports were not yet ready), This worked well and you could access your home directory on any machine from any other machine. The company never really had the money to have a proper home directory server ... and generally that ended up being your own workstation... and we worked on satellite imagery ... so disks were always full... and the backbone was 10Base2... But just networking 2 FreeBSD boxes' filesystems seems harder than that lot back then. Add in a couple linux boxes and something from M$, and you're into the territory where you just scp files around. I get the fact that network authentication is hard. I get that this is the problem. I've made 3 or 4 serious runs at LDAP ... but I haven't gotten it working. Is it time we (FreeBSD) had a solution that at least worked? Something ever-so-close-to turnkey? I've we're looking at the other more complex adoptions (like pNFS and ZFS and whatnot) ... it would seem that we should ship something that has a chance of working.