Sharing /tmp through NFS

[Michael Eldredge]

>I wonder if anyone has tried using one NFS-mounted /tmp directory for a
>group of machines....

We have all of clients setup using NFS mounted /tmp partitions.  They are
not (at least noticibly) slower than the ND mounted /tmp.  (Besides when
and if you ever go to 4.0.n it is all done with NFS anyway.)  We did run
some bench marks, setting one client with ND /tmp and one with NFS /tmp
and ran some huge compiles and some editors, etc. and in one test NFS was
faster; in another ND.  So we really just rely on the user-impression
metric.

Our server exports 2 /tmp directories (on differnt controllers):

	/etc/exports:
		/tmp.nfs1	Clients
		/tmp.nfs2	Clients

In each of these partitions are subdirectories named for the clients,
e.g.:

	/tmp.nfs1/hitchrack/
	/tmp.nfs1/cheshire/
	/tmp.nfs2/talbotts/

Then each client, in /etc/rc.local after YP, routing, biod and before the
"/etc/mount -vat nfs" call does:

	me=`hostname`
	case $me in
	[a-m]*) tmp=gloworm:/tmp.nfs2/$me ;;
	[n-z]*) tmp=gloworm:/tmp.nfs1/$me ;;
	esac
	/etc/mount -t nfs -o rw,hard,intr $tmp /tmp	>/dev/console
	# --------------------------
	/etc/mount -vat nfs				>/dev/console

So that the mount point is not at the root of the exported file system.

We're happy with it.

dredge
Michael Eldredge
Stanford Integrated Circuits Lab