FreeBSD NFS Client, Windows 2003 NFS server

[Harti Brandt]

Hi Warner,

On Wed, 6 Dec 2006, M. Warner Losh wrote:

MWL>Does anybody have experience with using FreeBSD 4.x or 6.x NFS clients
MWL>against a Windows 2003 NFS server?  What is the performance relative
MWL>to using a FreeBSD NFS server?  What is the stability?  Does locking
MWL>work?  Does the Windows 2003 server have extensions that grok file
MWL>system flags?

I use this regularily (well, -CURRENT). I have no numbers, but performance 
is ok. I have the home directories on a W2003k server and it 'feels' fast 
enough.

The only problem I see is a lot of 'file server not reponding' and 'file 
server up again' (with 2-3 seconds in between). This is usually when 
saving a large mail from pine. Linux clients see the same problem, so I 
suppose it is a problem on the SFU side. Locking seems to work. Problems 
are with filenames that are illegal for NTFS - hosting a 2.11BSD source 
tree on a W2003 NFS share does not work because of filenames containing 
':' :-). I've not tested what other characters are illegal.

Another problem is that on the NTFS side there is no good way to backup, 
copy, whatever the trees, because while NTFS handles Makefile and 
makefile, no Windows tool can access both of them. Even worse thinks like 
ADSM backup sometimes die with internal errors.

Mapping of UIDs and GIDs is rather magic. The FreeBSD side, the SFU tools 
and cygwin all see different numbers which is rather annoying. The same is 
with symbolic links.

The file flags are not supported by the server. There are no extensions 
that I know of.

harti