Talk:Network File System (protocol)

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[edit] NFS over TCP

[edit] pretty

sure newer NFS operates over TCP.  Robneild 00:16, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The statement: "Using TCP as transport made using NFS over a WAN more feasible (although not necessarily practical)." is both an oxymoron (feasible and practical are synonyms so how can something be both "more feasible" and "not ... practical"), and also sounds like bias, since there is nothing to back up the contention it is not practical. Besides which, I've used NFS across a WAN. If no one objects I'm going to delete the "(although ... practical)" part of the statement. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 198.95.226.224 (talk • contribs) 13:13, 10 June 2005 (UTC).

[edit] to Sfoskett

where is this "NFS disambig page" ur talkin about??? cant seem to find it Secfan 14:45, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

NFS. --SFoskett 15:49, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] WebNFS

Does anyone remember WebNFS? Some sort of half-arsed attempt by Sun to get everyone to replace HTTP with NFS? [1] [2] Richard W.M. Jones 10:53, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] No mention of its place in ONC?

NFS was one of a set of standards and protocols (others included XDR and Sun RPC) that in the 80's Sun clumped together under the title ONC (Open Network Computing). ONC was quite an historic achievement at the time. Apollo NCS was the only thing comparable. The whole political context of UNIX network computing in the 80's is probably worth a mention on this page. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Sparky62 (talk • contribs) 15:41, 1 October 2005 (UTC).

User:Mre5765: done. Hope it isn't too much detail.

IIRC, NCS predates XML/RPC, from which it the latter borrowed the idea to redo them with a slightly different set of design choices, notably the basic protocol, since NCS was initially DomainOS-based. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.238.217.133 (talk • contribs) 00:09, 12 September 2006 (UTC).

NCS predates XML, period (and predates HTTP, for that matter), but none of that is relevant to ONC, which predated both XML (and HTTP) and NCS, although the term "ONC" was, I think, coined as a response to NCS. Guy Harris 08:38, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ND ?

It could be interesting to add a note about ND (Network Disk) which NFS replaced circa 1987. Same idea, different implementation (ND was weaker). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.238.217.133 (talk • contribs) 00:09, 12 September 2006 (UTC).

No, not the same idea - ND supported remote access to a virtual disk, while NFS supported remote access to a file system; ND requests read from or wrote to block numbers on the disk, and the ND client implemented a regular UFS file system on the virtual disk, while NFS requests look and create up files, get attributes of files, read or write from byte offsets within the file, remove files, etc.. Only one machine was supposed to access an ND virtual disk, but multiple machines can access an NFS export. Guy Harris 08:58, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] added discussion of webnfs, onc, and nlm

Mre5765 01:40, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Network Failure System?

The manpage of maildir on http://www.qmail.org/man/man5/maildir.html says, NFS is an abbreviation of "Network Failure System". Has this been true? What does NFS really stands for?

No. I suspect a DJB snipe at NFS. Anyone who had to actually have their home dir on NFS during the early 90s would however probably sympathise. Richard W.M. Jones 19:31, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
Technically, NFS no longer stands for anything. Mre5765 01:41, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
That must be a post-RFC-3530 change, Mike - RFC 3530 is titled "Network File System (NFS)". Guy Harris 02:33, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Guy, Sun, the legal owner of the NFS trademark, at some point decided NFS stood for nothing. This was well before RFC 3530 ... probably while you were still at Sun. Mre5765 04:51, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some technical terms need wikilinking.

There are some technical terms here that aren't obvious to the lay person. For instance I don't know exactly what "asynchronous" means in this context, or which wikipedia article to link it to. If anybody could wikilink these terms to the appropriate articles I think a good few people would find that very useful. Ireneshusband 17:10, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Copy-edit?

If anyone has time, this page could use a copy-edit. For example:

Computer-people often use the term "network file system" as a generic term...

What, exactly, are "computer-people"? Are these the people who live inside my computer and push the electrons around, or are they some sort of computer-human hybrid? There are also a lot of TLAs in the article. In general, it just looks kind of messy and unprofessional. Chrismith 00:31, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WTF added (Sun) to this title?

NFS is an IETF protocol, if any thing. Mre5765 19:18, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] active-active and active-passive NFS

there is no mentioning to the features in NFS which allow multiple NFS servers to cooperate such as active-active and active-passive modes (?)--Mayz 11:52, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] PC-NFS

Need some form of discussion of PC-NFS. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.94.167.145 (talk)

[edit] Move page?

When I first encountered this page, I was thrown off by the (Sun) part of the title, since I was looking for a general page for the protocol. Then I realized this was the general page for the protocol. Since this protocol it is not exclusive to Sun Microsystems, could this page be moved to one of either:

  1. Network File System (protocol) or
  2. Network File System protocol ?

I'll move it to option 1, unless I hear any objections or alternate titles.+mwtoews 21:33, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

The first sounds good to me. --moof 02:14, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
Moved. I've updated half of the redirects ... I'll do the other half tomorrow. +mwtoews 08:56, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] PrestoServe

[Sun] and [DEC] used to sell this 'NFS Accelerator' -- perhaps a brief reference should be added to the article. 91.76.57.235 (talk) 13:36, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sun invented NFS, not IBM

NFS was an invention of Sun, IBM was not involved. The original implimentation of NFS was presented at UNIFOURM 85 and was an interoperating demo between Sun, a VAX 750 running BSD UNIX, Gould, and The Wollongong group. UNIFOURM 85 was also the first show wide Ethernet/TCP/IP network at a major trade show.

Robert.harker (talk) 01:07, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd been wondering about that too. The original papers were presented at the summer 1985 Usenix in Portland. I was there. No one from IBM is an author on any of the papers (I think there were three). The original protocol spec was a Sun tech report. Rees11 (talk) 17:02, 30 April 2008 (UTC)