another example of why NetInfo sucks!
serge_ruby
<Pine.NXT.3.92.950126...@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU> Mark
Crispin <m...@CAC.Washington.EDU> writes:
> Well, well, well.
>
> Here we have another, horrifying example of NetInfo sucking in a major
> fashion. 10-15 hours to boot your machine. 18 hours to reload your
> passwd database -- updating a 24,000 user flat file on 40 machines
> takes about two orders of magnitude less time!
>
Well Mark, if you hate NS so much, why do you still use it, just for the
pleasure of complaining?
Todd Takken
(serge_ruby) writes:
> > Here we have another, horrifying example of NetInfo sucking in a major
> > fashion. 10-15 hours to boot your machine. 18 hours to reload your
> > passwd database -- updating a 24,000 user flat file on 40 machines
> > takes about two orders of magnitude less time!
>
> Well Mark, if you hate NS so much, why do you still use it, just for the
> pleasure of complaining?
No. The university purchased NeXTs for the dorms, and Mark is the fellow
who got the job of administering them, along with the Macs and other dorm
computers. It wasn't his decision to use NextStep. The university has
now dumped the NeXTs in the main computing area, but there are still a
bunch of them left in the dorms. As I see it, Mark is trying to do his
job the best he can and is running into NextStep specific problems which
are quite understandably annoying.
-- Todd Takken
tak...@raven.stanford.edu
Darcy BROCKBANK
Mark doesn't hate NS any more than I do. He's only pushing what he
things is the best technology route for NeXT to take on some (several)
issues, one of which is netinfo. Mark has been around for a while, and
his opinions are very good to hear (experience does mean something,
after all). Too often in the rush to make new and cool things people
forget, or dismiss opinions that come from experience, often because
they seem unreasonable, or invalid, without the benefit of that
experience to be one's guide.
So, when Mark complains,he's only doing it because he cares about
NEXTSTEP and how well it works, and thinks that it can become
better. Now, you should be able to go home feeling all warm and fuzzy
inside ;-).
- darcy
(For the record, I don't hate NS either! I looove it. Sometimes it makes
me frustrated, like it's a child that's happy getting 85% on a report
card, when it's fully capable of bringing home 95%).
--
(prog (senseFood (prog (prog (senseFood move eat) eat (senseFood move eat))
rotRight eat) (prog move (prog (prog eat (senseFood move rotRight) eat) loop)
rotRight)) (prog (senseFood (senseFood (prog (prog (senseFood move move) eat
(senseFood move eat)) rotRight eat) (senseFood (prog (prog (senseFood move
Mark Crispin
I hate NetInfo, you mindless idiot, ***NETINFO***.
Look at the little squiggles:
NetInfo
does not look all that much like
NEXTSTEP
Go back to second grade and learn how to read.
Garance A. Drosehn
> Mark Crispin <m...@CAC.Washington.EDU> writes:
> > Well, well, well.
> >
> > Here we have another, horrifying example of NetInfo sucking in
> > a major fashion. 10-15 hours to boot your machine. 18 hours
> > to reload your passwd database -- updating a 24,000 user flat
> > file on 40 machines takes about two orders of magnitude less
> > time!
>
>
> Well Mark, if you hate NS so much, why do you still use it, just
> for the pleasure of complaining?
Don't confuse Mark with Mike Dahmus. Mark actually tends to know
what he's talking about. Mark also doesn't hate NeXTSTEP, he
complains about obnoxious problems because he thinks they are
obnoxious. Certainly the description of the above problem (which
is a real problem that happened to a real NeXTSTEP user) qualifies
as being obnoxious.
Now, the above problem might also be specific to release 3.0 of
NeXTSTEP, and things might not be anywhere near as bad in the
latest release.
--
Garance Alistair Drosehn = g...@eclipse.its.rpi.edu
ITS Systems Programmer (handles NeXT-type mail)
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Troy NY USA
Kenichiro Aoki
with scalability, it seems to me.
However, it should be pointed out that all the serious problems Mark has
mentioned so far (that I have noticed) do not really bring down
small clusters. In many (most) situations, NetInfo works pretty
well. On the plus side, I think NetInfo allows one to setup the
system (esp. networkside) pretty quickly even if you don't have
unix experience. I have seen this happen a number of times.
For most newcomers to Unix-ish systems, the barrier for
administration (especially network) is formidably high, or seems
so, and Netinfo is great for these guys. These guys won't be
administering big networks anyway (well I hope not!). I have
talked to a number of academics who want systems networked
quickly and well but don't want to be bothered by it. (and don't
have the $$ to hire pro administrator.) These guys are very
happy using NetInfo and have never encountered (noticed?) the
aforementioned performance problems with NetInfo.
Btw, I have never encountered serious problems with NetInfo
since I have administered only a small NeXT cluster. These days
I administer HP's, a NeXT, linux and sparcs (again a small
number, less than 10) and to tell you the truth, I sometimes
miss NetInfo.
What should be done --- and I think (hope?) that this is what
Mark is clamoring for --- is to have the option of completely
circumventing NetInfo if one wants. The choice thing.
This way, I think everyone will be happy.
Happy NeXTing.
--
Kenichiro Aoki (k...@phys.titech.ac.jp), Department of Physics,
Tokyo Institute of Technology, Oh-okayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, JAPAN
... posting from kyoto....
Mark Crispin
> What should be done --- and I think (hope?) that this is what
> Mark is clamoring for --- is to have the option of completely
> circumventing NetInfo if one wants. The choice thing.
Yup, that's exactly what I want. Which means that the DNS has to work
even if NetInfo is disabled. Which means that fstab has to work in the
standard Unix way even if NetInfo is disabled.
This used to work in 0.9, but after 1.0, NetInfo became mandatory.