Re: NewNFS vs. oldNFS for 10.0?

On 3/15/13 8:24 AM, Andre Oppermann wrote:
> On 15.03.2013 14:46, John Baldwin wrote:
>> On Friday, March 15, 2013 9:40:56 am Andre Oppermann wrote:
>>> Hi Rick, all,
>>>
>>> is there a plan to decide for one NFS implementation for FreeBSD 10.0,
>>> or to keep both around indefinately?
>>>
>>> I'm talking about:
>>>    oldNFS in sys/{nfs, nfsclient, nfsserver}     NFSv2+NFSv3
>>>    newNFS in sys/fs/{nfs, nfsclient, nfsserver} NFSv2+NFSv3+NFSv4
>>>
>>> NewNFS supports newer NFS standards and seems to have proven itself in
>>> some quite heavy traffic environments.
>>>
>>> Is there any reason to keep oldNFS around other than nostalgic?
>>
>> It can probably be removed.  It's kind of handy to keep around as 
>> long as 8.x
>> is around since it uses oldNFS by default as it makes merging 
>> bugfixes to the
>> NFS client a bit easier (you fix both clients in HEAD and can then 
>> just svn
>> merge both of those to 8 and 9).  Having several fixes to the NFS client
>> recently and being in a position of still using 8.x with oldNFS in 
>> production,
>> I would prefer to not remove it quite yet.
>
> Do you have a timeframe on the sunset of oldNFS in HEAD so we can 
> communicate
> a) that oldNFS won't be in 10.0; and b) it will go on date X?
>
> Would it make sense to make oldNFS more difficult to compile into the 
> kernel
> on HEAD to notify all those with legacy kernel config files?
>

NFS is a key feature of FreeBSD.  Prematurely removing the old code as a 
failsafe fallback for long time users and those building appliances on 
FreeBSD would be tremendously risky for those users and consequently for 
FreeBSD's reputation.

The old NFS code in FreeBSD took many years to become stable and still 
occasionally has regressions introduced due to other system changes.

The new code, while really good and very ambitions really deserves more 
time to soak than what we have given it.  Just recently our team has 
found issues with performance, stability and interoperability that gave 
us concern and forces us to use the old nfs system.

While we certainly should encourage people to use the new nfs code, that 
does not require us to break old kernel configs nor to prematurely 
remove a codebase that has many years of testing.

Finally, I think it is really premature to declare a sunset for the 
oldnfs until the users are gushing with approval over the new system.

-Alfred