named pipes and NFS

named pipes and NFS

[Richard Coleman]

I do not believe that name pipes/fifos (or any other
type of special file) have ever worked across NFS.
It goes against the stateless nature of NFS.  Also
remember that NFS was designed to handle more than
just Unix.

rc

Re: named pipes and NFS

[Zefram]

>I do not believe that name pipes/fifos (or any other
>type of special file) have ever worked across NFS.

The issue is not whether pipes pass data between machines (they never
have).  The issue is whether it is possible to create a FIFO node on an
NFS-mounted filesystem -- if one can, then it should work (locally) as
a pipe.  In the usual case, it is possible, but Zoltan's filesystem
mounted on Solaris from Linux doesn't permit it.  (Which is odd; ISTR
the Linux nfsd having specific support for FIFOs.)

>It goes against the stateless nature of NFS.  Also
>remember that NFS was designed to handle more than
>just Unix.

But it is very dependent on Unix for its design.  RFC1094 (NFS) briefly
mentions the possibility of named pipes, and does explicitly support
most of the other types of special file found under Unix.  RFC1813 (NFS
v3) explicitly supports FIFOs, and adds features like pathconf, that
directly map onto Unix filesystem features.

-zefram