[Klug-general] Linux NAS

[Mike Evans]

  but shouldn't the os cache into spare
> memory anyway.
>

I think the OS cache is at a lower level
than that.  i.e. an NFS write wouldn't cache at the client but would
contact the server and any writes to the physical disk would cache 
there.  Hence the old style need to sync sync before a shutdown.  NFS is 
stateless in connection so it sort of has to wait for confirmation that 
a write has succeeded before continuing.  (I seem to remember that it is 
so stateless than you can reboot the server in the middle of things 
without upsetting the clients as long as they are prepared to wait for 
it to come back up.)