Re: [NFS] Re: NFS version 4 at the University of Michigan

[Spencer Shepler <shepler@eng.sun.com>]

On Sat, Pavel Machek wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> > This is an announcement of the first public release of NFS version 4
> > for Linux, by the University of Michigan.  Up to this point, all of
> > our work has been done privately, but we are now hoping to involve
> > the open-source community at large.  Eventually, we hope to integrate
> > our NFS version 4 implementation into the Linux kernel proper, and
> > find a long-term maintainter for NFS version 4 (possibly one of the
> > current NFS maintainers, possibly one of us working in their spare
> > time).
> 
> Could you sumarise advantages of NFSv4 over v3? Is there usermode
> server for NFSv4? What servers for v4 are known working?

The highlights are:
- NFSv4 allows *nix and windows clients to play well with each other
  (NFSv4/CIFS clients can interact appropriately).
- Strong security (authentication/integrity/privacy) is required of
  implementations.
- A single protocol instead of a collection of protocols (e.g. file
  locking, ACL support are in the protocol)
- Delegation (similar to CIFS oplock support) allows for more
  aggressive caching at the client

The University of Michigan/CITI work is the first to "release" but the
other implementations are not far behind.  We will be meeting at
Connectathon in a couple of weeks to do interoperability testing.
Should be a good event.

-- 
Spencer