Re: [gentoo-user] autofs

[Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>]

Apparently, though unproven, at 14:57 on Friday 03 June 2011, Florian Philipp 
did opine thusly:

> 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?

I find that when an NFS server disappears from the client's view, the only 
thing that brings it back is making the server visible again. True, there are 
options that modify this behaviour (hard, soft) but they come with their own 
risks as described in the man page.

Trying to unmount an NFS mount with no server is painful, and all too easy to 
do if you carry your laptop to a meeting room in another building.

CIFS can usually at least be killed (depending on how it's mounted) - a 
kioslave in konqueror for example is easy to kill.

Neither option is well suited for laptops IMO but on balance CIFS tends to be 
easier for the user to deal with.

> That being said, I always use NFS over TCP because of performance issues
> with UDP and wireless LAN.

Smart move. I genuinely feel that the use-case for NFS over UDP has largely 
gone away in these modern times and TCP is the better choice for normal use.

OT, but the same applies to auth systems i.e. tacacs vs radius

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com