Re: [TCLUG:15107] nfs exports

["Eric M. Hopper" <hopper@omnifarious.mn.org>]

On Thu, Mar 23, 2000 at 03:17:07PM -0600, Mike Hicks wrote:
> "Eric M. Hopper" wrote:
> > 
> >         NFS is an evil kludge, and should be expunged and replaced with
> > something better.
> 
> Do you have any thoughts on the other options for network filesystems?
> (I was going to ask about CodaFS, but I think that has it's own
> filesystem type on the server...)

	I don't know much about CodaFS.  Sounds like something I should
study.

	I do have some ideas on how you might write a nice, distributed
filesystem that could actually do a decent job of tolerating server
failure, but they're sort of complicated.

	Stuff that requires it's own FS type on the server may be a way
to go, but I think it's a bad idea for any number of reasons, mostly
involving loss of flexibility.  :-) The skillsets and mentatily for FS
design and network protocol design are rather different.  Things like
ReiserFS, which are neat innovations that you want to use, typically are
invented by people who have expertise in FS design, but not networking,
and networked FSes are designed by people with the opposite skillset.
It seems like it'd be hard to get the two together and get something
that was as neat as what either could come up with alone for their
niche.

	It might also be nice to have a type of distributed filesystem
which could handle extended network 'outages' so you could mount your
server on your laptop and have it work.

	There was some professor at the U working on something called
the 'Global Filesystem' which involved having your hard-drives be
directly on your network, and having your workstations merely share
access to those drives.  He's using a fibrechannel (sp?) network, and
each workstation sends raw SCSI commands to the drives.  :-) Not so sure
about that approach either.  Someone mentioned security problems.  I
also think it would handle the laptop problem badly.

Hmmm...
-- 
Its name is Public Opinion.  It is held in reverence. It settles everything.
Some think it is the voice of God.  Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet
broke a chain or freed a human soul.     ---Mark Twain
-- Eric Hopper (hopper@omnifarious.mn.org  http://omnifarious.mn.org/~hopper) --

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