From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=DKIM_ADSP_CUSTOM_MED, DKIM_INVALID,DKIM_SIGNED,FREEMAIL_FORGED_FROMDOMAIN,FREEMAIL_FROM, HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS,MAILING_LIST_MULTI, RCVD_IN_ZEN_BLOCKED_OPENDNS autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (minnie.tuhs.org [IPv6:2600:3c01:e000:146::1]) by inbox.vuxu.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 802712144E for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2025 16:19:24 +0200 (CEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0C5E043B42; Thu, 14 Aug 2025 00:19:18 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mail-yw1-x1133.google.com (mail-yw1-x1133.google.com [IPv6:2607:f8b0:4864:20::1133]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id D142B43B41 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2025 00:19:11 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mail-yw1-x1133.google.com with SMTP id 00721157ae682-71d4afbf540so11258547b3.2 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 2025 07:19:11 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20230601; t=1755094751; x=1755699551; darn=tuhs.org; h=content-transfer-encoding:cc:to:subject:message-id:date:from :in-reply-to:references:mime-version:from:to:cc:subject:date :message-id:reply-to; bh=iykifIGX1gbLdfmKhcgsQt1rU7aWSXIMu26+coI/MfY=; b=Okx+YT3mKf/QG5wJ+1wBog60YVlm+2S5TKRLs4AANuI3oR6BVZ9sPq7UDtW4nmm+ri zwTAsriBEpv2Q7j6fDL5marKcIqobv6ZJBqnshqNGnU5LcBtxYHj/K4kfREEkvbKPG/Q rqG4iXnAkESpdm0maKgG4ubajo/r8cZMwwACfUT19zP9k3l9OKx0afe0YCqM/dsob2/R B4AnSyMDecXPMdPPN4eYFq2Gz2rgW3pjmrbrNlJUF6VVjAqfuGvJkKZf0ydU6bfyev/8 3qwgJ34ghNI8vXC2fHEXg4khgcu6PSPLKoXWU8t6ChNZMDhBjn5/KuW9CXMtD1VPhuV5 muCQ== X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20230601; t=1755094751; x=1755699551; h=content-transfer-encoding:cc:to:subject:message-id:date:from :in-reply-to:references:mime-version:x-gm-message-state:from:to:cc :subject:date:message-id:reply-to; bh=iykifIGX1gbLdfmKhcgsQt1rU7aWSXIMu26+coI/MfY=; b=Iqopv1ZWNmlFt1ddGoJ3vV5M4ZFQGRxcJryXgRGKuViNDzT+WSH7LGzs+OTuprK1jV YQYKGplqOeq6I0smRf7kN3wWp4D9/qRwWCLiOzv2uED/8pbKJVmWccavPLw2rLUfvo3d 30p3DiANGN1U1kc85qavICIprF1H7WHd2ta9RfGdTWrDmlpY+VuPBP7iKr84XSxwb8B8 w/seDjZHULp1PmQshk9HdWOcpuVCmy8NW41vU9wP9EL8uxWDMNGc2bxelgsmY9/NAFI7 4CNOj1M0FboGnFdondnNuGLR9pfz2WNZxzEVczzpgZd7sBw50bUDq0bzKsI7hPe4CM42 KGrw== X-Forwarded-Encrypted: i=1; AJvYcCVQEDJjWsURFEfzrLzww4/Je3FrKgSU4SIc5oyL9GS+BaCyG1y9lXq34damw1Wd7uBXcQTn@tuhs.org X-Gm-Message-State: AOJu0Yz/fwRVnYUCa1xBPFuAXhRXZKhGZprvUi/xOfOYEf0QB2WYsBP5 nUx1JGk2OcY9sbZko6sEbL+AP2PxJAML40iF0hSkXQ82R99QxvEmBGpch55vnq2umSTqVIG/GR+ mwsVkVRD5pHq7aFFSIJYegYN2B8M4mswsWnYpN+Y= X-Gm-Gg: ASbGncsQ7cVj0rTn2LSBASoo3c26CsMB31D+fo8nxVw2IXRwYX/b+BMhjvRd+TwugBN iZHfUvpw02rvhdGhWNVFxCIIDscOJQd0w3/8FEgwS4z5269nXpmmBy1bm3UOGnJEPg/w4owKxQB j3R14J+BEwS36bgpwAKp/fo5XLQ94f7Wh/1KQLyEPV/g5SFm8tdZyYq/2q9v/PyLQQ3TO3akWUq JkTmFSIb4u6A0X5RlHrh/zvPNqlF+ezfWWCYT2u X-Google-Smtp-Source: AGHT+IEpLUywMA6I3n4gANA06mfMKtbkEJcRgJeqogBS7W+HKH+2SkY8E006si3YXSjKZceYmY0MLnm0AugALa7u8Xc= X-Received: by 2002:a05:690c:6f05:b0:71b:68ab:8bdd with SMTP id 00721157ae682-71d4e5b588cmr39874787b3.39.1755094750884; Wed, 13 Aug 2025 07:19:10 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <20250813015509.GA17097@mcvoy.com> In-Reply-To: From: Dan Cross Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2025 10:18:34 -0400 X-Gm-Features: Ac12FXxDmgq6yPrTSFEsUU8rBQQXwiAT6bBT-qF9fsflLcn3ZfJSD67Inr4ZAvs Message-ID: To: Douglas McIlroy Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Message-ID-Hash: RJNRCA6MARMVHHCQ6I5256HYVCMDT7UB X-Message-ID-Hash: RJNRCA6MARMVHHCQ6I5256HYVCMDT7UB X-MailFrom: crossd@gmail.com X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; header-match-tuhs.tuhs.org-0; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header CC: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [TUHS] Re: NFS 40th anniversary event List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: On Wed, Aug 13, 2025 at 10:00=E2=80=AFAM Douglas McIlroy wrote: > I was always sorry that Peter Weinberger's RFS never made it outside > Bell Labs. It allowed networking between separately administered > systems by mapping UIDs. I believe it did? If I recall correctly, it was available with System V, though perhaps I am misremembering. I have no doubt that RFS was technically superior to NFS, but Sun had non-technical market advantages. Assuming that I am remembering correctly, I suspect it was unsuccessful commercially for two reasons: 1. Sun gave NFS (and the associated RPC layer) away for free, under a particularly liberal license, which lead to lots of interoperability (Larry's and Dave's comments notwithstanding). I suspect by the time RFS was available, it was much more expensive and less interoperable across heterogeneous systems. 2. Sun was quite adamant that NFS be stateless, and also not tied to Unix filesystem semantics, whereas (as I understood it) RFS was both stateful and deeply imbued with Unix semantics. Related to (2), while the File System Switch that was developed to support RFS was very elegant, I think that Sun's "vnode" architecture was seen as more flexible, permitting Unix to incorporate support for all sorts of foreign filesystem types (useful when CD-ROMs and things like floppy disks using the MS-DOS FAT format started becoming common). I suppose RFS could have been adapted to use vnodes, but by then it probably wasn't considered worth the effort due to lack of adoption. It may be worth mentioning that some NFS implementations are configurable for UID remapping in the server. I recall Sun environments with NFS and NIS (the mechanism for distributing /etc/passwd, groups, and other administrative data around a network). It was a really pleasant environment, and extremely productive. Properly configured, you could log into essentially any machine on the network and have access to your home directory, common data, locally installed programs (that of course lived on NFS), and so on. It was quite common to tell a colleague to just have a look in your home directory for something you were working on, facilitating collaboration, and so on. Diskless and "dataless" machines were common; the latter being machines that mounted _most_ things from a central NFS server, but had the operating system itself (really, /, /usr and /tmp) locally installed on a disk. It required a lot of effort to maintain, since Unix machines were still fundamentally meant to be standalone, and it wasn't as elegant as Plan 9 ultimately was, but it was very nice for the time. - Dan C. > On Tue, Aug 12, 2025 at 11:05=E2=80=AFPM Dave Horsfall wrote: > > > > On Tue, 12 Aug 2025, Larry McVoy wrote: > > > > > I think Sun people love it, because the Sun implementation just worke= d, > > > the rest of the world mostly hates it. I learned this when I left Su= n > > > and got to use other NFS implementations, they sucked. > > > > I can vouch for Sun's NFS working well, and others' not so much (zeroed > > blocks returned etc)... > > > > > We supported BitKeeper on NFS which meant we had to do lock files on = NFS > > > on all platforms. Believe me when I say I know that other NFS > > > implementations were a mess. Read all the drama here: > > > > I'm impressed by the workarounds for obscure kernel bugs :-) > > > > -- Dave