Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!faline!thumper!ulysses!andante!mit-eddie!bloom-beacon!gatech!ncar!ames!oliveb!sun!gorodish!guy From: guy@gorodish.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: Rename bug? Message-ID: <55437@sun.uucp> Date: 4 Jun 88 21:54:13 GMT References: <9312@eddie.MIT.EDU> <11658@mimsy.UUCP> <1126@mcgill-vision.UUCP> <1132@mcgill-vision.UUCP> Sender: news@sun.uucp Lines: 19 > I consider the whole vfs-based filesystem as an NFS thing, since it > exists only to support NFS. Which demonstrates that you *don't* know why the VFS mechanism exists. IT does not "exist only to support NFS." It exists to support *multiple* file systems; in other words, to permit several different file system types to share the same system call interface, and to permit new file system types to be added without rewhacking the system call interface. The following file system types are currently provided by Sun for the VFS interface: UFS, NFS, and an MS-DOS file system implementation provided by the Sun consulting group. AT&T's RFS, "/proc", and other file system types could also be implemented atop the VFS mechanism. I think some knowledgable customers have also looked at implementing, or are implementing, their own file system types. Neither the VFS mechanism nor Sun RPC exist solely to support NFS, despite the fact that some people *think* they do (and even publicly claim that they do). They were both designed as general tools, and NFS was implemented atop them.