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From: guy%gorodish@Sun.COM (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: touching devices through RFS
Message-ID: <11113@sun.uucp>
Date: Thu, 8-Jan-87 16:24:00 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.11113
Posted: Thu Jan  8 16:24:00 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 9-Jan-87 01:37:05 EST
References: <2086@brl-adm.ARPA> <1559@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> <2733@hammer.TEK.COM>
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Summary: No, RFS doesn't handle it; it's a very hard problem.

> What happens when the local machine executes an ioctl?  Does the remote
> machine also do an ioctl?  If so, how does it know which of the values
> in the structure parameter need to be rearranged because of
> byte-ordering and structure alignment differences?

Unless this is yet *another* thing added to the 3.1 "maintenance" release
(would the AT&T-IS people please indicate whether something is true of the
current S5R3 release or will be true when 3.1 comes out?), RFS doesn't
handle this.  As you point out, it requires somebody to translate every
"ioctl" argument to a standard form when it goes over the net.  Somewhere,
either on the client or the server side, the XDR format (or its equivalent,
although I think RFS uses XDR) for every possible "ioctl" argument needs to
be stored.