0.5. Differences between the first edition and second edition

The first edition was based on SunOS 4.1, whereas this edition is based on Solaris 8. The second edition covers much more material, mostly due to the enhancements made to NFS, including a new version of NFS (Version 3), a new transport protocol for NFS (TCP/IP), new security options (IPsec and Kerberos V5), and also more tools to analyze your systems and network.

The second edition also drops or sharply reduces the following material from the first edition (all chapter numbers and titles are from the first edition):

• Chapter 4. Systems and networks are now bigger, faster, and more complicated. We believe the target reader will be more interested in administering NIS and NFS, rather than writing applications based on NIS.

• Chapter 9. At the time the second edition was written, most people were accessing their electronic mail boxes using the POP or IMAP protocols. A chapter focused on using NFS to access mail would appeal but to a small minority.

• Chapter 14. This chapter survives in the second edition, but it is much smaller. This is because there are more competing PC/NFS products available than before, and also because many people who want to share files between PCs and Unix servers run the open source Samba package on their Unix servers. Still, there are some edge conditions that justify PC/NFS, so we discuss those, as well as general PC/NFS issues.

• Appendix A. When this appendix was written, local area networks were much less reliable than they are today. The shift to better and standard technology, even low technology like Category 5 connector cables, has made a big difference. Thus, given the focus on software administration, there's not much practical use for presenting such material in this edition.

• Appendix D. The NFS Benchmark appendix in the first edition explained how to use the nhfsstone benchmark, and was relevant in the period of NFS history when there was no standard, industry-recognized benchmark. Since the first edition, the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) has addressed the void with its SFS benchmark (sometimes referred to as LADDIS). The SFS benchmark provides a way for prospective buyers of an NFS server to compare it to others. Unfortunately, it's not practical for the target reader to build the complex test beds necessary to get good SFS benchmark numbers. A better alternative is to take advantage of the fact that SPEC lets anyone browse reported SFS results from its web site (http://www.spec.org).

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