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> File versions--who needs a revision control system when the filesystem can keep track I think that is looking at it the wrong way... It's more, "who needs th

by cbsmith 11y ago

> File versions--who needs a revision control system when the filesystem can keep track I think that is looking at it the wrong way... It's more, "who needs the complexity of a version control system?". Turns out, not everyone. > Extended attributes Umm... that has been there since forever. NFS is the only place where you struggle for EA. Again though... turns out it is not as important a feature for most people. > Fine-grained access controls The mother of all security audit nightmares. > Functionality even over high-latency links. NFSv4 and CIFS worked out perfectly functional solutions to this ages ago... and those are the filesystems that predated AFS. > Local caching and consistency control. Not surprisingly, same as above. > Survival even through netsplits. NFS 4.1 has this, not to mention most modern distributed filesystems, and while AFS has it, the problem can be complex enough one sometimes wonders if it really should be solved above the filesystem. > Quorum and consistency management on the fly (add and remove computers from the cluster without killing yourself) Well, NFS always had a pretty simple solution to this: stateless clients, and I can't think of a post-AFS filesystem where this wasn't handled in the local caching solution.

bsder 11y ago
NFSv4 did NOT predate either the VAX filesystem or AFS. I can tell you that as of 2000, Linux didn't even have a functional NFS lockd. FreeBSD's worked, but didn't handle partial file locking. NFSv4 was a pile of fail for a VERY long time. Maybe it's better now, but given that everybody still seems to use Samba (or sneakernet) for file sharing, I'm wouldn't bet on it.
- cbsmith 11y ago
  > NFSv4 did NOT predate either the VAX filesystem or AFS. Sorry you are right. I was trying to say that they from filesystems architectures that predated AFS, but that's really not the same thing. That sad, their approach was different from AFS (in some ways for better, though mostly worse). > Maybe it's better now, but given that everybody still seems to use Samba (or sneakernet) for file sharing, I'm wouldn't bet on it. Methinks you have a curious definition of "everybody". ;-) Honestly, I wasn't trying to hold up NFS or CIFS as anything resembling great solutions. Honestly, I love AFS. However, like all filesystems, it is rife with design trade offs. For example for the use cases that are intended to be addressed by the parallel file systems, as mentioned in the original article, it isn't a very good choice.

by cbsmith 11y ago

bsder 11y ago

NFSv4 did NOT predate either the VAX filesystem or AFS. I can tell you that as of 2000, Linux didn't even have a functional NFS lockd. FreeBSD's worked, but didn't handle partial file locking. NFSv4 was a pile of fail for a VERY long time. Maybe it's better now, but given that everybody still seems to use Samba (or sneakernet) for file sharing, I'm wouldn't bet on it.

cbsmith 11y ago
> NFSv4 did NOT predate either the VAX filesystem or AFS. Sorry you are right. I was trying to say that they from filesystems architectures that predated AFS, but that's really not the same thing. That sad, their approach was different from AFS (in some ways for better, though mostly worse). > Maybe it's better now, but given that everybody still seems to use Samba (or sneakernet) for file sharing, I'm wouldn't bet on it. Methinks you have a curious definition of "everybody". ;-) Honestly, I wasn't trying to hold up NFS or CIFS as anything resembling great solutions. Honestly, I love AFS. However, like all filesystems, it is rife with design trade offs. For example for the use cases that are intended to be addressed by the parallel file systems, as mentioned in the original article, it isn't a very good choice.