Is NFS Available?
13 messages in this thread
I remember a message on either this forum or AmigaTech that someone was using
NFS for the Amiga. Does anyone here know if it is available to the general
public?
I already have TCP/IP so I can use my OS/2 PC as a file server (that way I can
get by with 120MB on the Amiga), and I would like to have it backup the Amiga
as part of its daily backup cycle.
BobS
As long as the OS/2 machine has NFS and TCP/IP you could backup the Amiga
to the server's HD. The Commodore TCP/IP has NFS but as a client only. It
was only $800 to add TCP/IP and NFS to my UNIX machine!
Goin' AP
…..Mark Sterling
That's what I'm doing now, but even with LHA, I still have to transfer 30MB+
across the network and reserve the space on the PC.
$800? It cost <$350 to add TCP/IP and NFS to my OS/2 box, and that included
$100 for the NIC. Of course, I had to pay through the nose for the sw/hw for
the Ami, but what can you do? It might have been cheaper to buy another tape
backup unit, but that way I wouldn't have been able to play around with a
(mini)network.
BobS
I'm using Interactive Unix (Sunsoft) and the add-ons are not cheap
although less than SCO. I'm having fun with my small network too. I have
two Amigas w/ethernet attached to the UNIX host. All other terminals are
just serial connections to dumb terminals or PCs running VT100 emulation.
What sort of transfer rate do you get with NFS? I don't have NFS running
yet; just TCP/IP. FTP yields about 49k/sec with a large ascii file. This
is considerably slower than a decent tape backup but is very convenient
for sharing files. I have an A3070 scsi tape backup that I switch between
the two Amigas for backups. The UNIX box has a similar tape drive.
Fooling with TCP/IP was a whole new and confusing experience to me but it
is starting to come around.
Goin' AP
…..Mark Sterling
I just tried a transfer of a 17,008,640 byte file from the PC to the Amiga via
NFS. It took 3min 35sec which works out to about 79K/sec. When I transferred
files via FTP, I think that I was getting somewhere on the order of 58K/sec. I
have done some changes to the system since then, such as moving the SCSI HD (on
the PC) from external to internal, which is supposed to speed up the transfer
rate, so all of the gains may be disk related.
I just tried a transfer of the same file from the Amiga to the PC via NFS and
it's dog slow (9KB/sec). I can't even break it. I had to reboot. It looks
like the PC is updating the directory entry for the file for each block that
comes across.
I just ran FTP both ways on a 3.5MB file. It ran at 86KB/sec to the Amiga and
at 68KB/sec to the PC. Something is very strange here. I will leave more
messages on the OS/2 fora about this.
BobS
I think there is a switch you can set that turns off case-checking for
file names that could affect the speed of transfers. I don't have the
manual here at home so I can't check it now. It might have been in one of
the doc files on the disks and not in the manual. 9k/sec really stinks.
Forget about backing up to the PC if that is the best it will do. Please
let me know how you make out with this problem. I haven't bought the NFS
option yet and ONLY have two Amigas hooked to the UNIX box via ethernet.
Other machines/terminals are serial connections.
Have you used the RLoginvt option? I can't figure out how to send an
escape sequence with the function keys. It must need certain characters to
initiate an escape code and there is no help in the docs. I have a call in
to C= but no answer as yet.
Goin' AP
…..Mark Sterling
Mark–
I don't think that the problem is in the case-checking for file names. I did a
dir (on the PC side) of the directory that was receiving the files. It
appeared as though the date/time stamp for the file was being updated every
time a block was written to disk. In addition, it was also doing some sort of
seek on every disk connected to the SCSI bus. It doesn't make any difference
if I try to copy a file from an NFS SCSI partition to another NFS SCSI
partition. That's dog slow too. It also doesn't make a diff if it is to a FAT
or HPFS partition. I am going to try to write the files to my c: drive, which
is IDE, to see if that makes a difference. But first, I have to change the
\tcpip\etc\hosts file. Maybe I'll try that later this week.
Oh, if you want to send an esc, try ctrl-[ (often shown as ^[). I got that
info from my OS/2 TCP/IP manual. BTW, the Quick Reference Guide for TCP/IP for
OS/2 is larger than the entire Amiga TCP/IP manual.
BobS
It sounds like the problem might be on the OS2 side. Good luck. I'm
afraid I know almost nothing about OS2 except that it is still a very
young OS. Might be a teething problem with the file system or the NFS
implementation.
Thanks for the tip on sending the escape code. I tried typing ^[ (among
other things) with no luck. I'll try your suggestion ASAP.
Goin' AP
…..Mark Sterling
>>It sounds like the problem might be on the OS2 side. Good luck.
I hope (and pray) that the problem is on the OS/2 side. IBM is _considerably_
more responsive than C=. I called them yesterday to get CSDs (Corrective
Service Diskettes) for TCP/IP and NFS. The diskettes were waiting for me when
I got home today. I have already installed the updates and run a test. It
appears to have improved the throughput by more than 10%. Of course, I was
hoping for a 500% improvement, but it _was_ an improvement.
>> I'm afraid I know almost nothing about OS2 except that it is still a very
young OS. Might be a teething problem with the file system or the NFS
implementation.
Actually OS/2 has been around for over 5 years. It was originally written for
286s. The latest version (2.0) has been available for almost a year. OS/2 2.0
was written completely by IBM, as opposed to the previous versions which were a
joint effort by IBM and MicroSoft.
>>Thanks for the tip on sending the escape code.
I hope that it worked.
BobS
A 10% improvement probably still doesn't cut it. Too bad. Maybe there is
still something you can do to "tune" transfer rate. Maybe some parameters
for file system handling could be tweaked. I know this is often true with
UNIX.
I thought I heard that the file system with OS/2 2.0 was revamped. I guess
I knew OS/2 had been around a little while but I thought many had not
taken it very seriously until the latest release. The guy who does my
system programming uses OS/2 for his development machines exclusively and
would not use Windows if you threatened him with a gun. It sounds like it
is way more usable than MS-Dos which I hate with a passion although I use
it almost every day by necessity.
Goin' AP
…..Mark Sterling
Mark–
>>Maybe there is still something you can do to "tune" transfer rate.
I hope so. I have messages on the OS/2 fora and should be getting a response
soon.
>>I knew OS/2 had been around a little while but I thought many had not taken
it very seriously until the latest release.
Not even MicroSoft took OS/2 seriously once Windows started selling. Of
course, MicroSoft LAN Manager only runs under OS/2, so that's why they won't
upgrade it and are pushing Win NT.
>>The guy who does my system programming uses OS/2 for his development machines
exclusively and would not use Windows if you threatened him with a gun.
Neither would I. I was doing some C development under Win/DOS and locked up
the PC big time half a dozen times a day. The only way I could get everything
going again was to hit the reset switch. C-A-D did nothing. Under OS/2, I hit
Ctrl-Esc, terminated the task from the task list, and opened up a new DOS box.
OS/2 is a lot more usable than DOS. Faster too. Some people have run very
long dBase update jobs (10+ hrs) under OS/2 and have cut the run time in half
(your mileage may vary). The improvement is because the code for the FAT file
system has all been rewritten as 32-bit code. IBM is right when they say OS/2
is a better DOS than DOS. It's not quite a better Windows than Windows, but it
will run multiple Windows programs, each in its own window and keep them from
clobbering each other.
One nice thing you can do is set up multiple virtual DOS machines (VDMs), each
with its own AUTOEXEC.BAT. You could also have one VDM for each of the DOS
programs you use each day and switch back and forth among them with the Alt-Esc
combination, or have multiple DOS windows open on the desktop and jump between
them either with the mouse or Alt-Tab and resize them to full screen and back
with the Alt-Home combination.
[continued in the reply]
Robert,
What kind of tape drive have you? Maybe it would be simpler to add the
tape to the Amiga and let IT do the backups. That's what we do here at my
office.
Vic —
I have an RByte-100 4mm DDS drive mounted internally in my PC. It backed up
and verified 448,662,740 bytes (428MB) in 1 hr 33 mins. Assuming equal time to
do the write and read back (and ignoring rewind time), that works out to
157KB/sec, or almost twice as fast as I can transfer data over my network.
Copying a 3MB+ file from the PC to the Amiga under NFS transfers data at
79KB/sec.
Since the PC has the preponderance of data (380MB to 68MB), I decided to
install the tape backup there. I suppose that I can call the company that I
got the drive from and get an external box for it so I could mount it on my
Amiga. Don't ask me what I want to reserve the 5.25 slot in the Amiga for, but
I might need room for something in the future.
Thanks for your suggestion to mount the tape drive on the Ami. Since the
backup runs at midnight, I don't really care how long it takes, so it's not
important where the tape drive is mounted.
However, it's a real PITA to have copies _to_ the PC take 8-9 times as long as
transfers _from_ the PC.
Writing a file from the Ami to an NFS partition on the PC transfers data at
8-9KB/sec
Writing a file from an NFS partition on the PC to the Ami transfers data at
79KB/sec
An NFS put to the PC transfers data at 68KB/sec
An NFS get from the PC transfers data at 86KB/sec
I _really_ want to know where the problem is. I guess that I would have been
an EE if I weren't a programmer. The worst part of it is that it isn't _my_
code. If it were, I would know how to fix it.
BobS