[TUHS] RFS was: Re: UNIX of choice these days?

[arnold at skeeve.com]

> > Kevin Bowling <kevin.bowling at kev009.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > I guess alternatively, what was interesting or neat, about RFS, if
> > > anything?  And what was bad?

> On Thu, Sep 28, 2017 at 07:49:17AM -0600, arnold at skeeve.com wrote:
> > Good: Stateful implementation, remote devices worked.

Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> I'd argue that stateful is really hard to get right when machines panic
> or reboot.  Maybe you can do it on the client but how does one save all
> that state on the server when the server crashes?
>
> NFS seems simple in hindsight but like a lot of things, getting to that
> simple wasn't chance, it was designed to be stateless because nobody
> had a way to save the state in any reasonable way.

I won't disagree with you.

I remember that stateful vs. stateless was one of the big technical
debates of the time, and I remember that (my impression of) the general
feeling was that stateful was better but much harder to do / get right.
(Again, I don't want to start another long thread over this, especially
as I don't really remember any more than what I just wrote.)

So we can downgrade "stateful" from "good" to "different" and let
it go at that. :-)

Thanks,

Arnold