< ISC UNIX 2.2.3 ? (BSD-Filesystem) >

[Thomas Hoberg]

In article <402 at tokyo07.UUCP>, jimmy at tokyo07.info.com (Jim Gottlieb) writes:
|> In article <7360 at unlisys.in-berlin.de> rot at unlisys.in-berlin.de (Robert Rothe) writes:
|> >
|> >does InterActive plan to support BSD Filesystem in their next
|> >SysVr3 Release (2.2.3) ?
|> >
|> >would be a good thing ...
|> 
|> Would be a VERY good thing.
|> 
|> Symbolic links alone would be worth whatever they would charge for it.
|> NFS is practically worthless without symbolic links.
Oh yes, symbolic links are really nice. But NFS is *not* worthless without
symbolic links. Actually NFS can be (ab)used to provide something link symbolic
links to those without. While I believe that file systems under ISC's
implementation of NFS (and maybe any other) can only be exported as a whole any
node in the directory tree of the imported file system can be a mount point.
Example: We have a big /usr/local/{bin,lib,emacs,gnu} directory on the root file
system of one machine and stripped down versions on others. Now even though
/usr/local is not a mount point on the exporting machine, we can mount 
bigdisk:/usr/local at /usr/local an the smaller machines, conveniently over-
shadowing the files already there (which are still usable in a standalone
configuration). While it incurrs extra overhead through NFS you can use it to
place any subdirectory tree of any file system anywhere in the file system tree
by exporting and re-importing it elsewhere. I used to think that NMOUNT was
unreasonably high at 25, but... You may seriously confuse backup procedures
and end up saving the same files several times, but while it's not as nice as
symbolic links, it's better than nothing..

-- 
:-> tom
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