Re: gEDA-user: NFS Share

[Dave McGuire <mcguire@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Jan 10, 2006, at 6:42 PM, Eric Daine wrote:
> >   Nono.  This is not Windows.  The UNIX world has had capabilities 
> > like this for years, and some other operating systems (VMS for 
> > example) for decades.  I personally remember having done something 
> > very similar with X itself between four VAXes in 1988 under UNIX, and 
> > with other software under VMS ~5 years before that.
>
> I was sure NFS would work for the symbols and footprints, NFS is very 
> cool and something that started to sell
> me on Unix when I first saw it in use.  Whats puzzling me is that I 
> did not have to compile these programs on the Debian machine.  I mean 
> if a compiled binary will run on any of the Linuxes why release it as 
> source and go through all the troubles of building it.

  Because some people are running Linux on non-PC hardware, and still 
others aren't running Linux *OR* PC hardware.  I myself run it on 
UltraSPARC processors running Solaris and PowerPC processors running OS 
X...about as far away from Linux on an x86 as one can get.

>   I thought the compiled binary would be unique for the machine it was 
> compiled on in some way so that compiling under Suse and running under 
> Debian seems odd.

  Keep in mind that Suse and Debian are different Linux *distributions* 
("distros" for the prepubescent) but the are both still Linux.  There 
are many different ways to put together a Linux-based operating system, 
but at their most basic level they all consist of a kernel, libraries, 
and userland utilities...and those are largely the same.  These 
different distributions are just groups of people who couldn't agree on 
what should be included in a "packaged" ready-to-install Linux system, 
and later on they began to write their own installation utilities and 
stuff like that to differentiate themselves from one another.

> It is running locally on the client machine right?  I mean, all I am 
> sharing from the server
> is the disc space as far as I can tell.

  This is correct.

>   The client, Debian machine thinks the software is sitting on a local 
> drive, at least thats way I am looking at it.

  This is absolutely correct.  Try to think of it in terms of layers of 
abstraction.  There's a local filesystem living on a hard drive in your 
machine, and the kernel (and everything else) sees the files on it.  
There's another filesystem, which happens to be somewhere else...and 
the system sees the files on that too.  How it gets to the files is 
irrelevant...be it SCSI, IDE, FireWire, USB...or the NFS protocol 
carried over Ethernet, 802.11, FDDI, PPP, or whatever networking 
technology you're running.

> If I compiled gEDA programs up under Suse and then just Ftpd them over 
> to the Debian machine, I would not expect for them to run, or at least 
> I wouldn't have before today.

  Well to a very large degree, within a single hardware platform, Linux 
is Linux.  There may be C library version dependencies and other crap 
like that which might trip you up from time to time, but that's largely 
due to inexperience and/or carelessness on the part of the 
developers...of both the application in question and the system 
libraries themselves.  But most of the time, if you stay within one 
hardware architecture (x86, Alpha, SPARC, PowerPC, ARM...) stuff will 
Just Work.

> Thanks for the input and X resources suggestion,

  Any time.

> Eric in awe once again at all the power under the hood.

  It really is good stuff.  It pays to take your time and look at *why* 
things like this work, too.  If you understand things at that level 
(which almost no one does anymore, or so it seems) you will be able to 
come up with your own neat ideas of what to use that power for.  Then, 
and only then, will you earn your very own Geek Wizard hat. :-)

           -Dave

--
Dave McGuire          "I wonder what 'Error Code 1' means. That's
Cape Coral, FL         what it said when it started smoking."  
-Jonathan Patschke