A/UX concerns

[Ken Lindahl 642-0866]

In article <1991Feb21.202509.11608 at ni.umd.edu> steveg at ni.umd.edu (Steve Green) writes:
>Alan Mimms (alan at apple.com) writes:
>>Excuse me, Steve, but I want to find out if there is something strange
>>about your NFS usage.  We here (as you might expect) have several HUNDRED
>>A/UX machines, all happily using NFS to mount things from a Cray, several
>>VAXen, a Solbourne, several Suns, DECstations, R6000s, Motorola Unix boxes,
>>and a host of others (including, of course, lots of A/UX machines).
>>I haven't heard anyone complain that NFS is unreliable in A/UX 2.0 or
>>2.0.1.  Is it possible there's something unusual about your site or how
>>you're using NFS that causes problems?
>
>Not one bit possible.  Could it be that the problem is fixed in-house but
>not made available to customers??
>

Isn't it possible that Steve is using NFS in an entirely legitimate and
not very unusual manner that the A/UX group has not replicated? Alan,
your position seems tantamount to the claim that the A/UX group has
replicated and thoroughly tested every legitimate and non-unusual NFS
usage and found no problems. I don't believe you actually mean that.

>>I'm NOT trying to debug your problem, although I will happily attempt it
>>if you contact me.  I AM trying to say that A/UX NFS is NOT FLAKEY.
>
>YES IT IS!!!!  A/UX NFS is very flakey.  I cannot reliably compile
>ANYTHING on an NFS disk.

Well, I won't say "flakey" since the word isn't very precise and is highly
incendiary, but: 

    I work with several other programmers on an X windows application that
    currently runs on Macintoshes w/ A/UX, DECstations, VAXstations, Sun
    3/xx's, Sun SPARCstations, RISC/6000s, and PS/2s w/ AIX. The only way
    to maintain this application is to use the same source files for all
    of these different platforms, and to NFS-mount the source directory
    wherever it is needed. Currently, the source resides on a DECstation
    hard disk. Below the source directory is a subdirectory for each
    platform; compiler output (i.e. `.o' files) and the linked application
    go into the appropriate subdirectory. This strategy works admirably
    for every machine but (you guessed it) the Macintosh. In order to get
    the Macintosh version to work, I must compile and link on a non-NFS
    disk. (Actually, I've never tried compiling on NFS disks and then
    linking on local disk, too much work.)

My conclusion is that A/UX 2.0's NFS is in some way incompatible with NFS on
the DECstation, but I don't know enough about NFS to be more precise. I've
had several people offer impromptu explanations/rationalizations, but
nothing I felt was truly definitive.

I have reported this before, but I will do so again if requested.

Ken Lindahl				lindahl at violet.berkeley.edu
Advanced Technology Planning,
Information Systems and Technology
University of California at Berkeley