[Sussex] LINUX on Mini-ITX / Via?

[Geoff Teale]

Steve wrote:
------------
> Identical boot image - fine if the hardware is the same.
> 
> Identical /boot - again okay if the above is true.
> 
> Identical /usr - no problem, some diskless set-up have /usr 
> as a sym link
> to a read-only network share.

All good so far...

> Identical /etc - Is your brain working?!?!?!? All your severs 
> run on the
> same IP address.  Every one running the same services, 
> e-mail, DNS, and
> NFS.  Okay so I'm going over the top, but /etc is ment to be 
> different on
> each machine.  /etc can never be a share.  There is one 
> overriding reason
> above all other: /etc/mtab.  That file (and a number of other 
> in /etc) are
> very, very system dependant.

Doh!... told you I was tired today, didn't even begin to think that one
through, and this of course leads you back to your central administration
problem.

> Of course swap and /tmp would be configured to local disk.  But /proc 
> doesn't live on any disk.  Its created on the fly by the 
> kernel - but you
> knew that didn't you.  BTW: I'd have /tmp as a ram based file-system; 
> memory is cheap these days.

Yup.. sorry.. just falling into the "everything is a file" trap because I
was pulling info out of /proc/cpuinfo last night and it's so easy to fool
yourself into thinking that the information is coming from your harddrive.
I managed not to include /dev though ;)
 
> That's one of the problems with Unix.  It wasn't designed to 
> be admined as
> a common pool, it was designed as a stand-a-lone system.  
> Strange how life
> has a way of pointing out the wholes in our designs.

Yup, which is part of the reason why UNIX vendor advocate using it the way
it was designed to be used - which is where we came in.  So maybe, with PC
hardware so cheap these days you can make this type of setup work still.

> Sorry to shot you down like this, but it is fun and I know 
> you can take it.
> I've just put my old Mod Parker on with the target on the 
> back.  Your turn
> :-)

Hell.. that's what we do.. I like that I can bounce an idea around and
someone will tell me to stop being stupid - that's a lot better than a blank
look from people who haven't got a clue what I'm talking about.  Sometime I
just feel a need to vent my mind. Paul knows this - last night I explained
the differences between 2's compliment and 1's compliment (and the reason
why most systems use 2's compliment these days) to him for no good reason
other than as an example of how a University education can be at once both
irrelevant in the day to day, but highly useful in unusual situations..

..I also showed him my favourite RFC - really worth a look guys:

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2795.txt

-- 
geoff.teale at claybrook.co.uk
tealeg at member.fsf.org
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