No, it isn't all bad, but neither is M$ Windoze. <br>
<br>
Here's my issues with nfs and why I avoid it whenever possible.<br>
<br>
1- Security. If you take a look at CERT or SANS advisories
pertaining to *nix systems, NFS and it's dependencies (portmap and rpc)
have almost as many advisories as Bind and Sendmail.. <br>
<br>
2- UDP. That means connectionless protocol. If I'm moving critical
data, I want to make sure it gets there and I don't want to deal with
file and mount point locking wierdness and corrupted data.<br>
<br>
I want a secure, reliable transport for my files.. I'll hold out
to try nfs4. In the meantime, if the server has ssh and you have
Konqueror on your desktop, try fish. It gives you drag and drop
capabilities and uses ssh as a transport mechanism. If you want to do
something out of cron or on a command line, I use tar and ssh to move
data <br>
( tar cf - /source/data | ssh <a href="mailto:name@hostname.com">name@hostname.com</a> tar xf - -C /destination/data )<br>
<br>
That said, if you want to use NFS make sure you bump up your tx and rx
buffers and some of the other ip parameters in /etc/sysctl.conf and
increase your tx queue length. That'll help performance.<br>
<br>
<br>
Thanks and let's not let this turn into a flame war.<br>
<br>
--Dennis<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 4/27/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">James Wenzel</b> <<a href="mailto:jmwenzel@yahoo.com">jmwenzel@yahoo.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<br>Hello,<br><br>> If anyone knows a<br>> better way that's more efficient, uses less CPU and<br>> is easier to do,<br>> please respond.<br><br>Use Window$<br><br>:)<br><br>Jamie<br><br>--- "David J. Andruczyk" <
<a href="mailto:djandruczyk@yahoo.com">djandruczyk@yahoo.com</a>><br>wrote:<br><br>> Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 14:47:43 -0700 (PDT)<br>> From: "David J. Andruczyk" <<a href="mailto:djandruczyk@yahoo.com">
djandruczyk@yahoo.com</a>><br>> To: <a href="mailto:nflug@nflug.org">nflug@nflug.org</a><br>> Subject: [nflug] NFS isn't (all) bad.<br>><br>> There's been a statement put up by an individual<br>> "That NFS is bad, I
<br>> won't use it, it's so out-dated and so full or<br>> problems" and so on.<br>> The thread started because someone was having some<br>> NFS issues and it<br>> related to a mail server and mail spools or homedirs
<br>> residing on an NFS<br>> mount and some difficulty arrived. I presented a<br>> tiny bit of evidence<br>> about NFS performance as did some others about it's<br>> merits. The<br>> response I got seemed completely off topic, so I
<br>> wanted to show some<br>> examples where NFS is used in the corporate world,<br>> and if it's not<br>> considered optimal, I'd like to see a "better way"<br>> to do it. AS I'm<br>> always looking to learn new stuff.
<br>><br>> Example 1. NFS for remote bootable clients.<br>> Lets say you have a school. Schools are notoriously<br>> low budget , thanks<br>> to many things these days, so some places are<br>> turning to using thin
<br>> clients in their computer labs, and Linux is ideally<br>> suited for the<br>> task (free, easy to configure, very flexible, wide<br>> variety of<br>> choices/applications). You have a stack of old PC's
<br>> (let's day<br>> PII-400's), you have next to no budget for any<br>> replacement parts like<br>> disks and half your machiens are in the 5-8 year old<br>> range and have<br>> dead drives, what to do? Remote boot them, either
<br>> via a etherboot<br>> floppy, or via a PXE Nic to a central cerver, using<br>> software like<br>> PXE's, LTSP (Linux Term Server Project), or Knoppix<br>> Terminal server.<br>> It's simple, but all of them rely on NFS as shared
<br>> filesystem, why?<br>> because it's<br>> 1. Clean (simple to setup)<br>> 2. Easy<br>> 3. Built into the OS distribution,<br>> 4. (optional, not always used) The kernel can<br>> directly use a NFS
<br>> filesystem for it's root FS, it cannot do this with<br>> ANY other network<br>> filesystem without patching of the kernel (which is<br>> hard for someone<br>> who hasn't done it before)<br>><br>> Without using NFS these projects would be stunted
<br>> and held back. NFS<br>> (as far as I can see it) is the optimal tool for the<br>> job in the above<br>> case.<br>><br>> 2. Corporate home dirs (unix shop).<br>> One of the places I worked (Valeo, Rochester, 4+
<br>> years) was a mixed bag<br>> shop, windows AD, Unix, Linux etc. They had a<br>> large number of unix<br>> users, about 130 spread across two locations across<br>> a WAN link (SGI's<br>> mostly, though some HP and linux) All of the Unix
<br>> hosts made use of<br>> shared storage locations available via NFS from a<br>> Network Appliance<br>> Filer (big fileserver appliance that was used fot<br>> NFS and samba). The<br>> users used it for homedirs, application dirs,etc and
<br>> even mounted<br>> locations from over 250miles away (detroit area) via<br>> NFS over the WAN<br>> link, and it worked flawlessly.<br>><br>> 3. Small business backup server<br>> Another place I've doen a little helping out from
<br>> time to time, is<br>> asuccessfull computer business, They have a server<br>> with a bunch of<br>> disk tucked away in some hidden part of their<br>> office, and a full<br>> netwrok throughout. All servers backup to it via a
<br>> cron job dump based<br>> system (using "dump" to dump to files stored on the<br>> NFS server). It<br>> work great, is fast, allows easy recovery anyplace<br>> on the LAN and keeps<br>> things centralized. NFS in this case makes the
<br>> filesystem essentially<br>> transparent. They have a large pool of diskspace<br>> that can be mounted<br>> anywhere anytime on the LAN.<br>><br>> 4. Remote server installation<br>> I had to do an install of 9 mid-High end Linux
<br>> servers (4-16CPU, up to<br>> 64GB ram boxes) as part of my current job earlier<br>> this month. They're<br>> a Redhat Enterprise shop, and I was limited by them<br>> to using an older<br>> version (EL3) Their constraints were simple. Get it
<br>> done fast, and get<br>> it done right. IT helped that they required minimal<br>> customization. The<br>> fastest way I know to get a RH Box built is by using<br>> Kickstart, and a<br>> remote boot. Remote boot wasn't possible for their
<br>> datacenter, as<br>> DHCP/Bootp was not allowed, so I used the floppy<br>> method (faster than<br>> burning up custom CD's) Also note that these servers<br>> were located north<br>> of Boston Mass, and I was still in buffalo and
<br>> everything needed to be<br>> done via remote. (had a guy onsite to insert<br>> floppies for initial<br>> bootup). A NFS server was setup (super EASY), as<br>> every linux box that<br>> had it installed via default as it was IN USE there.
<br>> The ISO images for<br>> RHEL3 was put in place as well as kickstart config<br>> files tailored to<br>> each machine. I had a tech boot the machines off of<br>> floppy, while I<br>> watched them through a remote IP KVM (two disks were
<br>> needed to do the<br>> NFS boot (the drive disk was necessary for gigabit<br>> ethernet support).<br>> From the point where the second floppy was read and<br>> the install started<br>> to the time it finished and the machine was ready to
<br>> reboot took 13<br>> minutes installing via NFS. It installed about 3GB<br>> worth of data, so it<br>> wasn't an "everything" install. Yes I could have<br>> done an FTP or HTTP<br>> install, but those require significant more setup
<br>> time, as there were<br>> not FTP servers or http servers available for use<br>> for that task, but<br>> nearly ever unix/linux box in the datacenter (and<br>> there's about 185<br>> systems in there) could have been used for NFS.
<br>><br>> Hope you all enjoyed my long winded uses of NFS. If<br>> anyone knows a<br>> better way that's more efficient, uses less CPU and<br>> is easier to do,<br>> please respond.<br>><br>> So NFS is used in the real world, even though it's
<br>> been around a long<br>> time (which is a GOOD thing), it's alive and well,<br>> and has more uses<br>> than you might think.<br>><br>> Apologies for all the spelling and gramatical<br>> errors.
<br>><br>> -- David Andruczyk<br>> Unix/Linux Systems Administrator<br>> IBM Global Services<br>><br>> __________________________________________________<br>> Do You Yahoo!?<br>> Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam
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nflug@nflug.org</a><br><a href="http://www.nflug.org/mailman/listinfo/nflug">http://www.nflug.org/mailman/listinfo/nflug</a><br></blockquote></div><br>