CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_



Reported by Peter Honeyman/ University of Michigan

Minutes

At this meeting, attention was focused on NFS. The consensus was that it
will be most useful in the near term to draft a ``survival guide'' for
NFS. The audience for this guide will be vendors and system
administrators.

Suggested recommendations were discussed.  Items that can be addressed
only by implementors are noted.  Some items suggest coordination with
the NOC tools.


   o Avoid packet retransmission
      -  Soft mounts vs.  hard mounts
      -  Adjust timeout parameters to meet local conditions
      -  Transaction ID caching (implementation)
      -  Adaptive retransmission strategy (implementation)
   o Avoid IP fragmentation :  Adjust read and write sizes to meet local
     conditions
   o Ensure reliable data transfer:  Use UDP checksum for long-haul
   o Privacy issues
      -  Reserved socket myth
      -  Mutual distrust among client and server (implementation)
      -  Periodic FSIRAND (NOC tools)
      -  Setuid handling
      -  IP address verification at mount time
      -  IP address verification at access time (implementation)
      -  Root and anonymous mapping
      -  Generalized mapping (implementation)
   o System management
      -  NFSSTAT and NFSWATCH (NOC tools)
      -  SNMP for NFS (implementation)
      -  Export controls
      -  Cache timeout management


Since Ethernet checksum can obviate UDP checksum, a suggestion was made
that UDP checksum be a mount option.  This may not be practical, since
most NFS servers are running on an operating system for which UDP
checksum is either always enabled or always disabled.  The consensus
seems to be that correctness is more important than performance.  I.e.,
UDP checksum should always be enabled.  It was reported that in some
vendors' operating systems, it is impossible to turn on UDP checksum.

There was further discussion of the protocol for Kerberos integration
with NFS.

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ATTENDEES

    David Burdelski           daveb@ftp.com
    Andrew Cherenson          arc@sgi.com
    Sailesh Chutani           chutani@transarc.com
    Bruce Crabill             bruce@umdd.umd.edu
    Peter DiCamillo           smsmaint@brownvm.brown.edu
    Craig Everhart            cfe@transarc.com
    Dennis Ferguson           dennis@gw.ccie.utoronto.ca
    Fred Glover               fglover@decvax.dec.com
    Olafur Gudmundson         ocud@cs.umd.edu
    Peter Honeyman            honey@citi.umich.edu
    Steve Hubert              hubert@cac.washington.edu
    Tim Hunter                thunter@allegum
    Steven Hunter             hunter@ccc.mfecc.arpa
    Josh Littlefield          jost@cayman.com
    Tony Mason                mason@transarc.com
    Leo McLaughlin            ljm@twg.com
    Greg Minshall             minshall@kinetics.kinetics.com
    Jeffrey Mogul             mogul@decwrl.dec.com
    Dan Nydick                nydick@psc.edu
    Brad Parker               brad@cayman.com
    Drew Perkins              ddp@andrew.cmu.edu
    Joel Replogle             replogle@ncsa.uiuc.edu
    Bob Sidebotham            bobo@andrew.cmu.edu
    Ted Soo-Hoo               soo-hoo@dj-rtp.dg.com
    Brad Strand               bstrand@cray.com



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