On Wed, 18 Aug 2004, Bruce Arden wrote:
[I must admit to not having had a chance to use 6.5 (or even 6.4)]
So, how many people upon first login to 6.5x immediately typed the root password at the "login:" prompt? Whoops. Good thing the only person standing over my shoulder was another Unix admin as I reflexively started typing the password, in the clear, into the serial console log, after the 6.5.1 upgrade... a minor change in behavior (after 8 years of waiting for just the "Password" prompt), but one that I hadn't read about in the release notes and it could me totally by surprise.
I think the automatic editing for the root volume used to be necessary because there was no other way of changing the exports file. But now with "exportfs -p" there is a way. So the feature could be removed (but add a warning message about the change of behaviour).
I have to agree with this. One of the best features of ONTAP is that it just generally Does The Right Thing, but lately I'm guessing NetApp has been selling more filers into Windows shops, because stuff like the "registry" gunk has been creeping into the OS; I guess /etc/rc was just too old fashioned and Unixy. But seriously, an AUTOEXEC.BAT in etc/boot? That hurts.
Anyway, I just did an upgrade over the weekend without a clue that /vol/vol0/etc/exports was being tweaked - this thread was quite a shock.
vol create new ndmpcopy /vol/vol0 /vol/new vol rename vol0 old_vol0 vol rename new vol0 ...
Uh, whoops, now I've got this "/vol/new" export at the end of the file? Hmmm. Harmless, in this case, because at reboot there was no volume named "new" so it wasn't exported... still, this was another little surprise that could have had more serious consequences, and as another long-time Unix/ONTAP hacker I have to lobby against the dumbing down of ONTAP. Any sysadmin qualified to run the box can learn it in an hour or less; filers don't need to be much simpler than they are now. What's next? "Hey, Boeing, this 747 is too hard to fly, make it easier so we can use cheaper pilots."
Cringe.
-- Chris