[Gllug] Multiple Distro's, one swap partition?

[Nix]

On Wed, 24 Mar 2004, Christian Smith stipulated:
> On Sat, 20 Mar 2004, Nix wrote:
>>/home/.svn.esperi.org.uk/nix
>>/home/.svn.esperi.org.uk/gerald
>>/home/.inferno.esperi.org.uk/locutus
>>/home/.inferno.esperi.org.uk/billg
>>/home/.inferno.esperi.org.uk/darl
>>
>> etc....
> 
> Just curious, why?
> 
> I can understand that this may spread the load, and that users can
> effectively have nearly native disk speed for home access on their
> machine, but is this really necassary?

Given that we want home directories to be accessible across the network
(of course we do) and that we're using NFS, we have little choice but to
NFS-share them *somehow*.

Given that, it's nice to find something that kills NFS's management
disadvantages: I can't provide replication short of NFSv4, but at least
I can eliminate any need to tell each machine where things are mounted,
and `spread the load'.

> Doesn't it complicate backup?

Not really.

Part of my backup script's configuration reads:

my @uncompressed_files = ('*.bz2', '*.gz', '*.rar', '*.jar', '*.zip', '*.mp3', '*.mpg', '*.ogg', '*.jpg', '*.gif', '*.png');
my @excluded_files = ('*~', '*.bak', '.Mail.log', '.X.log', '.newsrc.dribble', '.locatedb');
my %excluded_directories = ( all => [ 'lost+found', '/var/tmp', '/usr/local/tmp', '/usr/local/archive',
                                      '/var/cache', '/var/run', '/var/spool/wwwoffle', '/var/spool/locate/',
                                      '/usr/src/build', '/var/log', '/usr/spool/lpd' ],
                             hades => [ '/mirror', '/usr/share/dar/catalogues', '/mnt/pcdrw' ],
                             amaterasu => [ ... more paths ... ],
                             ... more machines ... );
my @excluded_fsen = ( 'proc', 'msdos', 'devpts', 'tmpfs', 'openpromfs', 'iso9660', 'udf', 'usbdevfs', 'minix', 'vfat', 'nfs', 'none' );

note that `nfs' and `none' are in the excluded filesystems list, which
avoids backing up bind-mounts and the NFS-exported directories.

(given that said script is 400 lines long, this part of it was hardly a
killingly complex addition. The script's entire job is to build a
command-line for the dar program, which does the actual grunt-work.)

-- 
`The game proceeds with people picking up cards in turn, and every so
 often this is punctuated with a church council when everyone goes mad
 and starts yelling and playing cards at each other and persecuting and
 making deals.' --- Jo Walton on _Credo_
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