nightmare file system

Nightmare File System
 n.

   Pejorative hackerism for Sun's Network File System (NFS). In any
   nontrivial network of Suns where there is a lot of NFS cross-mounting,
   when one Sun goes down, the others often freeze up. Some machine tries
   to access the down one, and (getting no response) repeats
   indefinitely. This causes it to appear dead to some messages (what is
   actually happening is that it is locked up in what should have been a
   brief excursion to a higher {spl} level). Then another machine tries
   to reach either the down machine or the pseudo-down machine, and
   itself becomes pseudo-down. The first machine to discover the down one
   is now trying both to access the down one and to respond to the
   pseudo-down one, so it is even harder to reach. This situation
   snowballs very quickly, and soon the entire network of machines is
   frozen -- worst of all, the user can't even abort the file access that
   started the problem! Many of NFS's problems are excused by partisans
   as being an inevitable result of its statelessness, which is held to
   be a great feature (critics, of course, call it a great {misfeature}).
   (ITS partisans are apt to cite this as proof of Unix's alleged
   bogosity; ITS had a working NFS-like shared file system with none of
   these problems in the early 1970s.) See also {broadcast storm}.
    

Nightmare File System

   Pejorative hackerism for {Sun}'s {Network File System} (NFS).
   In any nontrivial network of Suns where there is a lot of NFS
   {cross-mount}ing, when one Sun goes down, the others often
   freeze up.  Some machine tries to access the down one, and
   (getting no response) repeats indefinitely.  This causes it to
   appear dead to some messages (what is actually happening is
   that it is locked up in what should have been a brief
   excursion to a higher {spl} level).  Then another machine
   tries to reach either the down machine or the pseudo-down
   machine, and itself becomes pseudo-down.  The first machine to
   discover the down one is now trying both to access the down
   one and to respond to the pseudo-down one, so it is even
   harder to reach.  This situation snowballs very quickly, and
   soon the entire network of machines is frozen - worst of
   all, the user can't even abort the file access that started
   the problem!

   Many of NFS's problems are excused by partisans as being an
   inevitable result of its {stateless}ness, which is held to be
   a great feature (critics, of course, call it a great
   {misfeature}).  {ITS} partisans are apt to cite this as proof
   of {Unix}'s alleged bogosity; ITS had a working NFS-like
   shared file system with none of these problems in the early
   1970s.  See also {broadcast storm}.

   [{Jargon File}]