[1] : Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001)

nightmare file system n. pejorative hackerism for sun's network file
   system nfs. in any nontrivial network of suns where there is a lot of
   nfs cross-mounting, when one sun goes down, the others often freeze up.
   some machine tries to access the down one, and getting no response
   repeats indefinitely. this causes it to appear dead to some messages
   what is actually happening is that it is locked up in what should have
   been a brief excursion to a higher spl level. then another machine
   tries to reach either the down machine or the pseudo-down machine, and
   itself becomes pseudo-down. the first machine to discover the down one
   is now trying both to access the down one and to respond to the
   pseudo-down one, so it is even harder to reach. this situation snowballs
   very quickly, and soon the entire network of machines is frozen -- worst
   of all, the user can't even abort the file access that started the
   problem many of nfs's problems are excused by partisans as being an
   inevitable result of its statelessness, which is held to be a great
   feature critics, of course, call it a great misfeature. its
   partisans are apt to cite this as proof of unix's alleged bogosity; its
   had a working nfs-like shared file system with none of these problems in
   the early 1970s. see also broadcast storm.


see also:
spl misfeature broadcast storm 

[2] : The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03)

nightmare file system
     
        pejorative hackerism for sun's network file system nfs.
        in any nontrivial network of suns where there is a lot of nfs
        cross-mounting, when one sun goes down, the others often
        freeze up.  some machine tries to access the down one, and
        getting no response repeats indefinitely.  this causes it to
        appear dead to some messages what is actually happening is
        that it is locked up in what should have been a brief
        excursion to a higher spl level.  then another machine
        tries to reach either the down machine or the pseudo-down
        machine, and itself becomes pseudo-down.  the first machine to
        discover the down one is now trying both to access the down
        one and to respond to the pseudo-down one, so it is even
        harder to reach.  this situation snowballs very quickly, and
        soon the entire network of machines is frozen - worst of
        all, the user can't even abort the file access that started
        the problem
     
        many of nfs's problems are excused by partisans as being an
        inevitable result of its statelessness, which is held to be
        a great feature critics, of course, call it a great
        misfeature.  its partisans are apt to cite this as proof
        of unix's alleged bogosity; its had a working nfs-like
        shared file system with none of these problems in the early
        1970s.  see also broadcast storm.
     
        jargon file
     
     
see also:
sun network file system cross-mount spl stateless misfeature 
its unix broadcast storm jargon file 

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