[KLUG Members] An NFS design/use question...

[Bruce Smith]

> >> >As a tip, it's possible (and sometimes less confusing) to mount the
> >> >remote directory on a local directory of the same name....
> >> Thanks.  Haven't answered the question.
> >Because there was no question ask in the original email.
> >You ask for a ranking, but ask no question.
> But you didn't even give a ranking, you gave "N/A" :)

I guess "insufficient info" or "huh?" would have been more accurate. :-)

> >Your two mount commands seemed to be unrelated, so I must be missing
> >something.  I don't have a clue how to rank such a thing.
> >Here, rank this command for me:  ls
> 11 ! :)

Cool!  How about:  pwd    :-)

> What I'm doing may be equally complex in some ways, perhaps even intractable.
> Going back to the original question...
> mount nfs-one:/Users /home
> mount nfs-two:/shared/mail/joe /home/joe/mail
> 
> If we assume that /Users/joe/mail on nfs-one is empty, then does the 
> second mount work? 

"empty"?  You mean the directory exists but is empty, or the directory
doesn't exist at all?  If the directory doesn't exist, the mount will
fail.

I admit to never trying mounting a second directory in the middle of an
already mounted NFS directory, so I don't even know if it'll work.  

Speaking generally (single mount, not your multiple mount example), you
can mount a empty NFS directory, and it appears as empty.  New files go
on the remote server.  Any existing files on the local server in that
directory disappear and are not accessible when the NFS dir is mounted.

Something else to keep in mind when planning these things, what happens
when your NFS directory goes "stale" (server goes down)?  It can really
lock up a NFS client when a stale directory is accessed, and the boot
may hang when mounting NFS filessystems.  So, if you have a server that
doesn't run 24/7 (dual boot to Win or something), you might want to make
the NFS "noauto" in fstab and only mount when needed.  FWIW ...

 - BS