SUMMARY: SunOS on Auspex interacting with PCs

From: Kandy Simpson (kandy@illustra.com)
Date: Tue Apr 15 1997 - 12:05:32 CDT


Thanks to the following for responding:
root@tester.ebu.ericsson.se
rali@meitca.com
simon@iway.nl

My Original Question:
>I have an Auspex running SunOS 4.1.4 equivalent. We
>have PCs running NT and interacting through the
>Hummingbird Package NFS Maestro to achieve connectivity.
>Has anyone out there experienced intermittent/consistent
>problems with this combination?
>
>Is there additional setup or software required on the Unix
>side of the configuration? If so, would the lack of this
>setup or software cause instability?
>
>Transmission and connectivity problems related to larger
>file size transactions (40 MB) seem to be a known problem
>area in our current scenario.

Apparently, there are known bugs... Simon elaborates on this:

        "the earlier versions had problems copy local
        (PC) read only files to NFS drives. (It would
        try to duplicate your local file perms on the
        server, but it would do it before actually
        copying the file ...) Maestro also had a few
        problems following symlinks, check this out. I
        think that it has some other bugs, but they
        are pretty trivial, and should be sorted by now .....

        Because NFS use UDP, once it has grabbed some
        bandwidth, it hogs it, on a small file which
        takes only a second to write, this is not a
        problem, because the response for each user
        (is) rapidly shared. A 40 meg file will take
        quite some time to copy, and thus other users
        will suffer while this is happening."

Recommendations:

* The general feedback was to check the client side to
  ensure that the clients are running the latest and
  greatest NFS is being used.
* Alternative software package was suggested by Reto
        samba (public domain implementation of MS SMB)

You can find samba pages at:

   http://lake.canberra.edu.au/pub/samba/samba.html

* Check out of the router and transmission rates was also
  suggested by Reto:

        "Is this going over a router? Are the MTUs
        different on either side, if so? On big
        transfers yuou stand more chance of going into
        massive retransmit orgies if the router starts
        having troubles slicing and dicing say FDDI into
        Ethernet (4500 to 1500). I ended up setting the
        OFFNET MTU on my auspex to 1500 to spare the
        router the work"

I once again would like to thank those who responded so
quickly, you guys are great!! I will be working on these
suggestions right away!

-Kandy
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<Kandy Simpson 1111 Broadway Suite 2000 >
<Unix Lead Oakland, CA 94607 >
<Sr. Systems Administrator (510)873-8346 >
<Informix Software, Inc. (510)873-6234 FAX >
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