From: Brent Callaghan (Brent.Callaghan@eng.sun.com)
Date: 05/21/98-04:08:58 PM Z
Date: Thu, 21 May 1998 14:08:58 -0700 From: Brent.Callaghan@eng.sun.com (Brent Callaghan) Message-Id: <199805212108.OAA18192@terra.eng.sun.com> Subject: NFS backward compatibility Thanks to those who have contributed their opinions on NFS v4. Please keep `em coming. There's at least 110 people on this list (some are sub-lists) and there's been 8 responses in the last couple of days. There have been several comments referring to "NFS backward compatibility" being a limitation as to what we can do with v4. There is no compatibility limitation. As an RPC-based protocol NFS versions are not required to be supersets of previous versions. Each version can have its own unique set of operations and semantics. We would expect NFS clients to speak to NFS 2, 3, and 4 servers and similarly NFS servers should support version 2, 3, and 4 clients - however the versions are independent protocols. My expectation is that v4 will continue to be a simple protocol, easy to implement and debug, and not the 100% solution to all distributed filesystem issues. I think I'd be safe in assuming that it'll be based on ONC RPC and use the IETF's RPCSEC_GSS security, utilize filehandles, idempotent read and write operations, and simple recovery (statelessness has never been a tenet of NFS design). I think we can take take the goodness of v2 and v3 and make it better in v4. NFS is a foundation - not a limitation. Brent
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