SysV RFS Puzzle

[Robert C. White Jr.]

in article <734 at mccc.UUCP>, pjh at mccc.UUCP (Pete Holsberg) says:
> I have Starlan and RFS running between a pair of 3B2/400s which are
> running SysV R3.1.2.  Machine mc3 is advertising resource mc3-root to
> the primary (mccc).  That resource is on mccc's automatic mount list,
> yet mccc says that there are no resources available for mounting.  ???

Several Questions:
	(1) Are both mc3 and mccc in teh same domain?
	(2) If 1 above is false, have you used the DOMAIN.resource
		naming convention?
	(3) If 1 above is true, are you shoure you have one and only
		one of them defined as the primary name server, and
		the other has had "rfadmin -q <primary name server name>"
		command run on it at least once.
	(4) What does nsquery have to say.
	(5) When you created mc3-root did you restrict access to
		a spesific client list?
	(6) If 5 above is true, did you spell it right?

Obvious checks:
	(7) Are RFS and STARLAN both set to run automatically on
		system startup?
	(8) Do other STARLAN Functions work?
	(9) Is your domain name unique to your network?


The biggest and easiest thing to get wrong with RFS is defining
two or more machines as the primary name server for the same domain name.
If you do this, and circumstances permit it to pass unnoticed,
you will effectively have two isolated domains with the same name.
Each machine on the network will only be able to access the other
machines which beleive in the same primary.  If an out-of-domain
request comes through for that domain name, all hell will break loose.
If you want each machine to serve as its own domain, then all your
mount and inquiry requests will have to start with the domain
name of the machine as well as the resource name (NUION.pubdev),
and the domain names have to be unique.

If you have accidently dual-domained your systems then do the following:

(1) log into the machine which you want to be the real primary and
	use "sysadm rfsmgmt" to add the other machine name to that
	primary and give it a password.  you may want to list the
	second most important machine as a secondary if you have
	more than two machines in the domain.
(2) log into the other machine and use "sysadm rfsmgmt" to re-setup
	the local machine and make it a "non-primary" durring the setup.
	When the dependant machine is started it will atuomatically
	receive the details of it's role from the primary.

Once the primary is configured correctly, issuing "rfadmin -q primary-name"
on any of the dependant machines will usually correct any problems
on that machine (except a bad password).

Rob.