I’m running openSUSE 11.0 on a quad core desktop with 4 GB memory, Gigabit ethernet, etc.
I’m planning on setting up (among other things) an NFS server on this box, and am wondering on the advantages, disadvantages, security and performance tradeoffs between installing the kernel module NFS server versus the user space NFS server.
I’m hoping that someone can clarify the differences between these two options, because searching the internet and even this forum hasn’t shed much light.
The one that comes out of the box is the kernel one. Seems to work fine for me but then I only use it to support a diskless terminal. I didn’t think the userspace one was seriously supported these days.
The default desktop installation doesn’t install any NFS server, so when I go to install software, I have a choice of both with no indication which is preferred. As such, I’d call them both “out of the box”, although I can’t find any information to help me judge which would best meet my needs.
The reason I went with the kernel space server was because in the SUSE versions I have been using for the last few years, it seemed to me there was a bias towards the kernel space server and it was this one that seemed to have better support in the setup tools.
I think you will also find some comments in the package about the userspace daemon having poorer performance than the kernel space one.
Another aspect, let’s look at how current the userspace version is. zypper lists the supplied version of nfs-server as 2.2beta51. A search gets us the unfs project on Sourceforge SourceForge.net: User Space NFS where the last published version is 2.2beta47 of 2002. So if we accept that these are the same project, it has only progressed from beta47 to beta51 in 6 years. And even if by chance they are not, then still we have an OpenSUSE package that is labelled beta51. I would think this means little has been added to the project for a while, except perhaps some security fixes.
Oh and Olaf Kirch worked on both servers so maybe you could ask him directly.
On Fri, 2008-08-22 at 10:36 +0000, sylerner wrote:
> I’m running openSUSE 11.0 on a quad core desktop with 4 GB memory,
> Gigabit ethernet, etc.
>
> I’m planning on setting up (among other things) an NFS server on this
> box, and am wondering on the advantages, disadvantages, security and
> performance tradeoffs between installing the kernel module NFS server
> versus the user space NFS server.
kernel one works.
The user space one has quirks. It also allows you to break
the rules (which can be interesting).
>
> I’m hoping that someone can clarify the differences between these two
> options, because searching the internet and even this forum hasn’t shed
> much light.
The only one that works is the kernel based one.
You’ll have issues at some point with the user space one (unless you
need to do something intentionally the “wrong” way… in which case
the user space one is what you need… experts only).
IIRC there ware some problems in earlier threads (on a predecessor forum) with NFS. I advised toswitch to the kernel one (as I use myself) and the problems were solved.
So just to be pragmatic: the kernel one works fine both within openSUSE and with YaST as manager.
