Re: CVS checkout read-only

[Larry Jones]

Glew, Andy writes:
> 
> > Sharing a repository with NFS is a recipe for disaster.  We've had
> > numerous reports of file corruption due to NFS interoperability bugs. 
> 
> Q: when did this start happening?
> 
> Did it originate when the RCS functionality
> was incorporated inside CVS?

No, it's been happening ever since system developers started tinkering
with the NFS code they bought from SUN or writing their own, which means
that it's getting worse as time goes on.  The most common problems seem
to involve Linux clients and/or SGI servers, but that doesn't mean that
they're wrong -- they may just be very good at tickling bugs in other
systems, or they may just be very common platforms.  As I said, the bugs
are almost always interoperability problems between two different kinds
of systems, so both vendors typically insist that the other system must
be at fault and refuse to address the problem.  The problems also tend
to be infrequent and non-reproducible, making diagnosis very difficult. 
There are also some vendors who disble some of the NFS reliability
measures by default in the name of performance.

> Surely, people had been using RCS and SCCS
> for years on NFS systems.

I'm not so sure of that -- NFS has aways had a reputation of being a bit
dicey; I'm not sure how many people would trust it for RCS or SCCS,
either.

-Larry Jones

Everything's gotta have rules, rules, rules! -- Calvin