1) If applications are mounted via NFS, and someone runs the
application, is the processor on the NFS server or the client system
used? (I'm pretty sure it's the client, but I was told different today,
so now I'm not sure..)

If the application bits sit on the server, and the person on the client
system types the command to execute them, then they run on the client.

2) What sort of problems are there with NFS on Linux? I have heard that
there are file locking problems, but nothing really in depth. Anyone
care to elaborate?

Depends what you mean by "file locking".  Do you mean "creating a lock file"?

Normally "creating a lock file" works fairly well with the NFS that is on
Linux, since creation of a file is one of those things that NFS takes as
an atomic operation, goes all the way through to the disk surface of the
server before the client moves on.

There can be a race condition though:

        o client asks to create lock file
        o server creates lock file
        o server starts to report back to client that lock file is created
        o server crashes before acknowledgement goes back to client.

Now when the server recovers, the client (who never got an acknowledgement
that the lock file had been created) tries to re-try the creation of the lock
file.  But that lock file exists (it was created right before the server
crashed).  So the client can not create it.  Catch-22

Version 3 of the protocol (which also allows 64-bit files) corrects this
little problem, and also speeds up the NFS writes considerably.

If by "file locking" you mean that one process can not read or write to a
file while a non-cooperating process is reading or writing to it...you got to
be kidding.  That is why you use a database. :-)

md

-- 
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Jon "maddog" Hall
Executive Director           Linux International(SM)
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]         80 Amherst St. 
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WWW: http://www.li.org

Board Member: Uniforum Association, USENIX Association

(R)Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in several countries.
(SM)Linux International is a service mark of Linux International, Inc.

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