On Wed, 14 Jul 1999, Michael Richardson wrote:

>
>>>>>> "fission" == fission  <fission@mb.sympatico.ca> writes:
>    fission> On Tue, 13 Jul 1999, Michael Richardson wrote:
>
>    >> no_root_squash allows root to read/write. Since the kernel needs to read
>    >> the root partition, and needs to use swap, and it does it as uid=0, you need
>    >> no_root_squash.
>    >> The other file systems do not need root write permissions, so why be more
>    >> permissive than necessary. 
>
>    fission> Why not?  What happens if I want to install something in /usr/local?  Then
>    fission> I would need root write permissions on the /usr filesystem, right?
>
>  Yes, but the system doesn't require that.

You should do the installation on the server.  There are advantages to
mounting as much as possible read-only on an NFS client.  In particular,
you can modify the filesystem attribute caching parameters on the client.

For R/W filesystems, an NFS client has to keep checking with the server to
see if a file has been changed by the server (or another client).  But /usr
should never change (except when you install software), so there's no need
for the client to keep checking if something like /bin/ls has been modified.


Roger

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Roger Brooks (Systems Programmer),          |  Email: R.S.Brooks@liv.ac.uk
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