FreeBSD NFS Client, Windows 2003 NFS server

[M. Warner Losh]

In message: <20061207090026.I17220 at knop-beagle.kn.op.dlr.de>
            Harti Brandt <hartmut.brandt at dlr.de> writes:
: 
: 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.

This is excellent information.  So building a ports tree would be,
ummm, problematic.

: 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.

That's good information.

: 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.

Also good information.

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

This is the one I knew about!  The others are far more important :-)

Warner