NFS mounts over other files

[Gary Heston]

In article <1991Jun24.155616.22965 at aio.jsc.nasa.gov> bill at gothamcity.jsc.nasa.gov (Bill Shirley) writes:

>	I am mounting a filesystem using NFS (from one Sun 4 SPARCstation
> to another).  I know that if I mount it onto a directory with files in it,
> the files become unavailable.  Is it a bad idea to do this or not?  
> Specifically, I want /usr/lib/X11 files to be contained on one machine
> (there is a lot of font info that takes up space).  But if the server or 
> network is down, I want the others to be able to startup X (and for that
> they need minimal font files, rgb files, ...).  I already
> have put important executables (X (server), xterm, ...) on each machine,
> but have the frills on the server (oclock, xcal, ...).

Yes, it will work; I have a similar setup for the console terminfo 
files so that I can use vi in single user mode without having to 
mount /usr. The only catch is that having any of the files open will
block the mount; in your case, the users will have to exit X and
be out of the directory before the NFS mount will work.

You will, of course, lose the disc space the files occupy. 

> I have RTFM, but failed to find a mention of "mounting over" files.

I've never seen mention of it myself, I sort of stumbled onto it when
copying a file into an unmounted structure--it went into the directory,
instead, and when the structure was mounted, the file vanished!


-- 
Gary Heston   System Mismanager and technoflunky   uunet!sci34hub!gary or
My opinions, not theirs.    SCI Systems, Inc.       gary at sci34hub.sci.com
I support drug testing. I believe every public official should be given a
shot of sodium pentathol and ask "Which laws have you broken this week?".