Re: [gentoo-user] autofs

[William Kenworthy <billk@iinet.net.au>]

On Fri, 2011-06-03 at 14:57 +0200, Florian Philipp wrote:
> Am 03.06.2011 14:25, schrieb Alan McKinnon:
> > Apparently, though unproven, at 14:18 on Friday 03 June 2011, Volker Armin 
> > Hemmann did opine thusly:
> > 
> >> On Friday 03 June 2011 13:37:54 Stéphane Guedon wrote:
> >>> On Friday 03 June 2011 12:55:58 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> >>>> Apparently, though unproven, at 12:44 on Friday 03 June 2011, Stéphane
> >>>> Guedon
> >>>>
> >>>> did opine thusly:
> [...]
> >>>>
> >>>> The point is that NFS was not designed with laptops and other devices
> >>>> that can be disconnected in mind. It was designed for secure LANs that
> >>>> do not change much, and laptops present issues that are not easy to
> >>>> solve.
> [...]
> >>>
> >>> Nfs hasn't been designed for laptop, it's ok. But, appart from coda
> >>> (which has a file size limit of 1 giga, so, useless in home networking),
> >>> I know nothing that is fit for network file-sharing for laptop (the
> >>> laptop isn't the server of course).
> >>>
> >>> I search a solution for that since years !
> >>
> >> samba?
> > 
> > +1
> > 
> > Samba works nicely for ad-hoc connections, the kind of thing Windows clients 
> > would do. And it's a lot more tolerant of connections going away than NFS.
> > 
> > 
> 
> I always was under the impression that NFS is more fault-tolerant on the
> network because of its usage of stateless UDP connections whereas CIFS
> usually freezes when the connection is lost. In the end, both issue an
> IO error, usually crashing an unprepared application. So, in which
> regard performs CIFS better with interrupted connections?
> 
> That being said, I always use NFS over TCP because of performance issues
> with UDP and wireless LAN.
> 
> Regards,
> Florian Philipp
> 

No, its ok in a fixed network but you get wierd issues like clients
hanging on shutdown because the NFS server goes away first, and its an
administrative pita when it stops working - could be firewall, something
missed in a new kernel etc.

Ive been using it for mythtv and diskless systems (NFS over TCP) for
quite awhile and its a fight every few months to find out why host x
syuddenly doesnt want to play.  But otherwise works well use wise in a
controlled environment.

Laptops are a whole different matter though - you might be better off
side stepping if its only looking at media by looking into streaming
rather than storage mapping.  Otherwise, Samba is probably the next
best.

BillK


-- 
William Kenworthy <billk@iinet.net.au>
Home in Perth!