[W/K] :: 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-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.
       
          [{Jargon File]