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Xref: sserve comp.os.linux.development:22911 comp.os.386bsd.development:3085 Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development,comp.os.386bsd.development Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msunews!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!news.sprintlink.net!news.indirect.com!wes From: wes@indirect.com (Barnacle Wes) Subject: Re: SAMBA and NETWARE mounting Message-ID: <D33JLI.Ct0@indirect.com> Sender: usenet@indirect.com (Darin Wayrynen) Organization: the briney, briney deep Date: Sat, 28 Jan 1995 03:41:41 GMT References: <3eo2j1$l5o@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au> <D267uw.Grq@park.uvsc.edu> <D2JnoD.1DD@pe1chl.ampr.org> <D2KG6E.CMp@park.uvsc.edu> <D2LH48.3IF@pe1chl.ampr.org> <D2qACr.A46@park.uvsc.edu> <D2s16r.428@pe1chl.ampr.org> <D2vrE0.D8M@park.uvsc.edu> <D2x440.1J1@pe1chl.ampr.org> <D2y5tv.JAC@indirect.com> <a09878.791064315@giant> X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Followup-To: comp.os.linux.development,comp.os.386bsd.development Lines: 75 wes@indirect.com (Barnacle Wes) writes: > Why not? You're holding up NetWare files services as being superior to > NFS? > ... > NetWare Users: Oh, no, we don't actually use the network, except to store > stuff on. We do *everything* on a local disk, and then copy it over there > because it's way to slow to *use*. Curt Sampson (a09878@giant.rsoft.bc.ca) wrote: : I wasn't going to get involved in this, but this is a bit much. I'm : not at all a fan of NetWare and IPX myself, but we use it extensively : here, and we run complete Windows configurations entirely off the : network. (The machine boots DOS, loads up the network drivers, and : that's the last time it touches the hard drive, except for temporary : files (and swap, if it needs to swap). Our speed problems are due : mostly to having ninety users per segment, fifty of them slinging : about multi-megabyte CAD files. (One day we'll get a bigger Ethernet : switcher....) : NetWare has the one great advantage that it's *very* fast. At slinging : files about. I'd like to see anybody run 150 CAD users on a 64 MB 486/33 : using NFS. We had 15 - 18 programmers on UNIX and VMS workstations, sharing files via NFS from their own *workstations*. Yep, that's right folks, our two big "servers" comprised a DECstation 5000/200 and a SPARCstation 10/512 with programmers working on them. The programmers used compilers, debuggers, and editors that were all served by the SPARCstation, and the source code masters and libraries were served by the DECstation. Your home directory was on your workstation, which only meant anything if you were working on your own workstation at that moment; when you work on products that run on 14 UNIX and 2 VMS platforms, that's usually less than half the time. The combination of NFS and automounter in that situation was one of the most elegant programming environments I've ever seen. I'm rather proud of it, since I designed *most* of it. <Pat, pat, pat> Of course, all we were doing was using GCC (from an NFS mount) to compile and link 4 - 6 Meg Motif and Galaxy applications (with the libraries on NFS as well); nothing challenging like loading a CAD drawing. ;^) : The disadvantage, of course, is that it doesn't do anything *but* : sling files about. System maintenance is a nightmare compared to Unix. : (Ever tried to get a script of any significant complexity even : written, much less running reliably and doing proper error checking, : on an MS-DOS machine?) And IPX really bags it over slow (say, 56K) : links. We run IP at a priority way below IPX on our WAN routers and IP : stuff is still a lot faster. Some of this may be fixed in the new IPX : internetworking stuff from Novell (along with stupidities like the SAP : problem), but other parts of it are due to bad design in NCP (which is : designed to talk to a server the same way a DOS program talks to : DOS--leaving you with silly things like order(n) packets required to : get a directory listing of a directory with n files in it). Right -- NetWare requires you to "throw away" a machine to be the server, albeit a cheap machine. And a 486dx2/66 NetWare file server *with* a fast ethernet card, fast SCSI disks, and lots of RAM is still not as fast at serving files as our old, trusty DECstation 5000/200 was, even with Phil crunching away with GCC (or even ACM!). Perhaps I was just not exposed to a well-tuned NetWare server, but we never tuned our NFS servers much other than to raise the number of biods to 12 (or threads on the Solaris server). : However, if I'm not internetworking, there are situations where I'd : use NetWare over anything else. Me too - in the case where I need a bright red box to hold the door open. Wes Peters