NAME

nfsmount − a Sprite-to-NFS filesystem gateway

SYNOPSIS

nfsmount  [−t] host:/filesystem /prefix

OPTIONS

−tTrace each access to the remote file system. 

−m local-name remote-name
Specify logical mount points within the namespace.  See commentary below. local-name is the sub-mount point relative to /prefix.  remote-name is an absolute path specifying the Sprite remote link. 

INTRODUCTION

Nfsmount is a pseudo-filesystem server that provides access to a remote NFS file system.  The first argument is a host name, a separating colon (‘:’), and a file system on that host.  The second argument is a Sprite prefix under which the remote file system will be visible.  The server is still very simple, although quite functional.  Each operation causes an RPC to the remote host;  there is no caching yet. 

Real NFS allows one filesystem to be mounted onto another NFS filesystem.  This doesn’t work in Sprite because Sprite requires a remote link (see ln command) for each NFS filesystem and it is not possible to create one of these within the parent NFS filesystem. Consequently, the subsidiary filesystem must be mounted elsewhere in the Sprite tree. Then the parent nfsmount program must be told that there is a logical mount point within its namespace using the -m option.  The first argument is the name (relative to the root of the parent tree) where the mount point logically exists. The second parameter is the absolute path of the remote link where the child NFS tree is really mounted in Sprite. 

BUGS

The getpwd() library call doesn’t work yet because it can’t find the “inode” number of the prefix correctly.  This is fixable but may not happen right away.  A related problem is that the df command won’t report disk space. 

KEYWORDS

NFS

Sprite version 1.0  —  October 20, 1991