From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Aug 23 01:24:10 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.FreeBSD.org (8.6.11/8.6.6) id BAA18290 for hackers-outgoing; Wed, 23 Aug 1995 01:24:10 -0700 Received: from mail2.digital.com (mail2.digital.com [204.123.2.56]) by freefall.FreeBSD.org (8.6.11/8.6.6) with SMTP id BAA18284 for ; Wed, 23 Aug 1995 01:24:07 -0700 Received: from tartufo.pcs.dec.com by mail2.digital.com; (5.65 EXP 4/12/95 for V3.2/1.0/WV) id AA16942; Wed, 23 Aug 1995 01:19:58 -0700 Received: by tartufo.pcs.dec.com (/\=-/\ Smail3.1.16.1 #16.39) id ; Wed, 23 Aug 95 10:19 MSZ Message-Id: Date: Wed, 23 Aug 95 10:19 MSZ From: me@tartufo.pcs.dec.com (Michael Elbel) To: jkh@time.cdrom.com Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Making a FreeBSD NFS server Newsgroups: pcs.freebsd.hackers References: <41a428$1aa$1@haywire.DIALix.COM> <11064.809015030@time.cdrom.com> Reply-To: me@freebsd.org Sender: hackers-owner@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk In pcs.freebsd.hackers you write: >There are better ways of doing this, BTW.. A company I used to work >for (Periphere Computer Systeme, GmbH) had something they called >MUNIX/NET which did all of the above and at very reasonable speeds. >Even then, many people praised MUNIX/NET as a superior solution to the >whole file sharing problem, even if it did require kernel modification >on both the server and client ends. It basically used the "superroot" >model for addressing other machines (/../machine/file) and you could >talk to everything from files to tape drives remotely - something you >can't do with NFS. Since you could also traverse mount points >successfully on the local machine, you got around that particular >foible of NFS as well. [...] >Some PCSers here talked about resurrecting MUNIX/NET and bringing it >back to life on FreeBSD, but I don't think that the legal powers were >ever willing to open the doors enough to allow it, so I suspect that >MUNIX/NET will die along with BETAMAX and OpenLook. Good solutions >shot dead by mediocre solutions with bigger guns.. :-) Unfortunately getting MUNIX/NET wouldn't be easy. I probably *could* get permission to rerelease the MUNIX/NET code under a BSD copyright. It's just that one can't simply give it away like it is. Especially the filesystem stuff is highly integrated into the SysV 3.2 filesystem code. You might say, it was hacked in at various places instead of trying to create a clean layer, which might even have been impossible, what with SysV R3 not having a vfs layer. This means, one would have to generate a whole new set of interfaces to use FreeBSD's vfs stuff. To do this, it would be necessary to closely look at the current code, which wouldn't be possible for anybody without a SysV source license :-( So, anybody with the knowledge to rip the SysV implementation apart and the license to look at it out there who is willing to do the job? Michael -- Michael Elbel, PCS GmbH, Muenchen, Germany - me@FreeBSD.org Fermentation fault (coors dumped)