Where Is Information about NFS Compatibility?

Where Is Information about NFS Compatibility?

This information is partly taken from Nicolai Langfeldt's excellent
NFS HOWTO, and is current as of 10/1/1999.

Most version 2.2.x kernels need a set of patches to install the knfsd
subsystem, maintained by H.J. Lu, to communicate efficiently (if at
all) with Sparc, IBM RS, and Alpha machines, and probably others. This
package is actually a collection of patches to the kernel sources.
Better support for non-Intel architectures is included in the 2.4
kernels.

There is also a user-space server. Although it lacks remote file
locking, it is easier to install. It may be equally efficient.

In the Documentation/Changes of recent kernel distributions, there is
a list of URL's for both the knfsd server and the user-space server.

There is a CVS server available for the kernel-space NFS subsystem, as
well as a NFS WWW page at http://www.linuxnfs.sourceforge.org/,
although the URL requires a password for access. The relevant URL's
are listed in the README.nfs file at ftp://ftp.us.kernel.org/, and
other kernel archive sites, along with login information. Patches are
at ftp://ftp.varesearch.com/pub/kernel/latest/patches/.

The source archives of the user-space server and utilities currently
reside on
ftp://linux.mathematik.tu-darmstadt.de:/pub/linux/people/okir/.

In the case of older Solaris releases, the lack of statd or lockd on a
client or server machine may cause incompatibility. On some versions
of Solaris, statd can be used to exploit features of the automounter.
Sun released a patch to correct this, but statd still needs to be
started by root on such systems. On recent Solaris systems, refer to
the information in /etc/dfs/dfstab and the share(1M) manual page to
enable volume sharing. In addition, the rpcinfo program can tell you
if statd or lockd are available on the local or remote machines.

The linux-kernel mailing list has on-and-off discussions of the status
of the NFS subsystem, which appears to be changing rapidly.

[Nicolai Langfeldt, Robert Kiesling, Anders Hammarquist]


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