Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!mcvax!ukc!dcl-cs!strath-cs!jim From: jim@cs.strath.ac.uk (Jim Reid) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: NFS vs. RFS Message-ID: <352@stracs.cs.strath.ac.uk> Date: Fri, 9-Jan-87 07:51:24 EST Article-I.D.: stracs.352 Posted: Fri Jan 9 07:51:24 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 10-Jan-87 03:52:56 EST References: <5488@brl-smoke.ARPA> Reply-To: jim@cs.strath.ac.uk Organization: Comp. Sci. Dept., Strathclyde Univ., Scotland. Lines: 42 In article <5488@brl-smoke.ARPA> Gwyn@BRL.ARPA writes: >This NFS-vs.-RFS discussion reminds me of a question I wanted to ask: > >When we upgraded our Gould PowerNode 60x0/90x0 systems to UTX/32 >Release 2.0, which incorporated NFS support, I was dismayed to >discover that a perfectly ordinary program compiled in the BSD >environment had died in the middle of what appears to be a large >amount of Yellow-Pages support code dragged in from the C library. >This was a total surprise to me, as the UNIX System V emulation >that I provide doesn't include any of this stuff, nor will it! > >My question is, is this yp_* library crap really necessary for NFS? No. Yellow Pages and NFS are independant of each other and you can use one without the other. You get Yellow Pages to "help" administer the local network - it just lets YP hosts keep track of changes to files like /etc/passwd, /etc/hosts and so on without having the system admin. update every copy of these files on each host every time they change. You can argue the case either way for having your SysV environment contain the YP code (and the underlying SUN XDR and RPC routines). However if it's possible that your SysV lookup routines will read files containing YP information, you should ensure the SysV code won't blow up if it gets YP entries instead of the usually expected data even if it won't make use of the YP routines. What scunnered (a good Scottish word!) me about YP was that it added about 18Kbytes - yes, 18Kbytes - to things like the password lookup routines. This was because getpwent() & friends now have to parse YP formats and perhaps make remote procedure calls, serialising and deserialising data using the XDR routines, as well as get conventional password entries. I could have taken the YP code out, but saving disk space is less important to me than wasting time editing umpteen password files. Jim ARPA: jim%cs.strath.ac.uk@ucl-cs.arpa, jim@cs.strath.ac.uk UUCP: jim@strath-cs.uucp, ...!seismo!mcvax!ukc!strath-cs!jim JANET: jim@uk.ac.strath.cs "JANET domain ordering is swapped around so's there'd be some use for rev(1)!"