[wellylug] CVS woe

[Daniel Pittman]

Cliff Pratt <enkidu at cliffp.com> writes:
> Daniel Pittman wrote:
>> Cliff Pratt <enkidu at cliffp.com> writes:
>>> Daniel Pittman wrote:

[...]

>>> SFU - the acronym says it all. I still have the nightmares. The
>>> "POSIX layer" AKA "Interix" was/is truly horrible.
>> 
>> Compared to Cygwin, or just in general?  The NFS and NIS integration
>> was a bit pants, really, but the basics were good.
>
> NFS + Interix was SFU. Well, I'm talking about version 2.0, but I
> don't suppose that change in later versions. (But see at the end).

Well, and NIS integration, which might also have been a latter addition.

OTOH, I was talking about SFU 3.5, which was substantially improved from
the earlier releases.  I didn't have a lot to do with those, but I could
credit that Cygwin might be an improvement over those versions.

[...]

>>> It's hard to choose between the two, really. SFU (I'm not sure if
>>> it was the Interix component) used to regularly hose the Windows
>>> file permissions.
>> 
>> SFU is Interix, and Interix is SFU.  That might explain the
>> difference in our experiences, though:
>> 
> (But see at the end)
>
> Erm, not that I remember. SFU was SFUed NFS with *parts* of Interix on
> top. It wasn't a full POSIX implementation (though the full Interix
> was). You couldn't run a shell, you couldn't run scripts, and so far
> as I could tell it was only the bits of Interix that would allow a
> Windows NFS solution. We ran it on Windows NAS servers which HP sold
> as NAS 'appliances'.

Yeah, we were both talking about vastly different versions of SFU; the
stuff I use (3.5) included all of the above features, and was able to
build direct from pkgsrc — the ports tree from NetBSD and friends.

So, yeah, it was a lot more POSIX. :)

> I went on a search for the Interix bits and I found at least some of
> the programs, but I didn't find a shell though I did find Perl.

You wouldn't, I expect, because they usually shipped with Interix or
SFU.  Presumably the vendor "applianced" SFU along with the rest of the
kit.

[...]

>> You could use it to confuse Win32 software by having case-sensitive 
>> filenames ("Foo" vs "foo", in the same directory) or through having 
>> different permission inheritance rules (POSIX rather than NT ACL 
>> inheritance).
>
> Ah, maybe the different permission inheritance rules would explain why
> all Windows file permissions would now and then disappear.

If you were touching them through the POSIX layer, it might well. :)

> Hah! I've discovered a possible reason for our different experiences.
> The systems we had were described as NAS4000 with Windows 2K3 Server
> Appliance Edition (or similar). Please see the following link and
> especially the bit that talks about "NAS4000 w/ win2k3, Server
> Appliance Kit(SFU 2.5), and SR1 patches CD installed" and further on
> down about "I have read in other threads that removing the Server
> Appliance Kit and installing the full SFU 3.5 version resolves the
> issue, but the documentation with the NAS4000 specifically states that
> this should NOT be done??"
>
> http://tinyurl.com/c7vlwa or
> http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do?admit=109447626+1238839841009+28353475&threadId=709181
>
> It looks to me that the "Server Appliance Kit (2.5)" might have been a
> crippled version of the SFU. (I thought we had SFU2.0 but could be
> wrong). What we had was definitely NOT the full Interix.

Well, my guess is that it was SFU 2.0 because that gave them NIS
integration[1] under the names:

 • User Name Mapping Services
 • User Name Mapping and Services for UNIX NFS Support

Those would let the NAS device interwork with a NIS network[2], without
burdening the upstream vendor with actually providing a useful SFU /
Interix environment that people might, you know, actually use.

So, yeah, it sounds like you got well stiffed on the Interix side,
explaining why you hated it and I didn't. :)

Regards,
        Daniel

Footnotes: 
[1]  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/interopmigration/bb380242.aspx

[2]  Badly