Chapter 10. PC/NFS ClientsContents:PC/NFS todayLimitations of PC/NFS Configuring PC/NFS Common PC/NFS usage issues Printer services Using PC/NFS, PC machines can mount NFS filesystems as logical disks and use them as large virtual disks. Note that a client-only implementation does not limit the direction or types of file transfer operations that are possible within PC/NFS. It simply means that the PC is always the active entity in the Windows-NFS server relationship; the user must mount an NFS filesystem on the PC and then copy files between it and the local disk. In this chapter, we'll look at why you would want to use PC/NFS, alternatives to PC/NFS, setting up PC/NFS, and PC/NFS usage issues.
10.1. PC/NFS todayThe first NFS client for Microsoft DOS or Windows operating systems was developed by Sun Microsystems in the mid-1980s and was called "PC/NFS." The PC/NFS brand name has become a generic term to refer to any product that provides an NFS client feature on Microsoft operating systems. Today, Sun Microsystems has abandoned the PC/NFS business, leaving a fairly competitive field of several vendors of commercial PC/NFS products. There are also some freeware or shareware clients if you look hard enough, but there does not appear to be much development activity around them.It is beyond the scope of this book to provide a detailed survey of PC/NFS implementations, since they each have unique features, and new releases for each arrive all the time. You can use Internet search engines, Usenet archives from sources like google.com, and as a last resort, queries to Usenet's comp.protocols.nfs newsgroup to get feedback on what products people prefer. You can also look at www.connectathon.org to see which companies test products at the annual Connectathon interoperability testing event. While the Connnectathon web site won't tell you which companies test NFS and which of those have PC/NFS clients, the list of companies is not too long, so you could go to the web site of each and see which have PC/NFS implementations. When selecting a PC/NFS implementation, your minimum set of required features should include all of the following:
turned up this URL:source code for pcnfsd
http://www.sunfreeware.com/programlist.htmlwhich had both source and binaries (Solaris 2.6, SPARC) for PCNFSD. Obviously, URLs come and go, so don't be surprised if you find PCNFSD somewhere else. Advanced and interesting features of some PC/NFS implementations include:
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