"Stateless Linux" project
by Stuart Ellis
I'm absolutely delighted by this - I'd long since given up hope of a
mainstream vendor looking at a cached client approach rather than trying
to insist on either thick or thin.
The issue of backing up user home directories from mobile devices in
mentioned in the PDF, but I'd be very interested in hearing about
approaches for dealing with syncing shared data stores.
With a home directory or private data store basic sync works if it can
be made transparent to the user, and/or integrated into the GUI
(Off-line Files on MS Windows, Mac iDisk).
Writable shared data stores presumably require some form of
reconciliation or version control for multiple off-line copies to be
handled smoothly. I suppose that one solution might be to wrap access
to a version control system into the standard GUI so that the
functionality becomes accessible to office workers; another might be to
use a database-backed system like Storage, which could replicate.
How are people dealing with this issue on their networks now ? What do
we think would be the "Just Works" solution in the context of Stateless
Linux ?
(I've seen the problem, but I don't know the answer...)
--
Stuart Ellis
s.ellis(a)fastmail.co.uk
19 years, 7 months
Re: Homedir backup (was Re: "Stateless Linux" project)
by Bryan K. Wright
otaylor(a)redhat.com said:
> The question in my mind is:
> If you never have a high bandwidth connection to the backup server,
> does the automatic homedir backup concept make sense?
It may make sense with something like rsync, using its
--partial and --compare-dest options. See the following from the
rsync documentation:
--compare-dest=DIR
This option instructs rsync to use DIR on the des
tination machine as an additional directory to com
pare destination files against when doing transfers
if the files are missing in the destination direc
tory. This is useful for doing transfers to a new
destination while leaving existing files intact,
and then doing a flash-cutover when all files have
been successfully transferred (for example by mov
ing directories around and removing the old direc
tory, although this skips files that haven´t
changed; see also --link-dest). This option
increases the usefulness of --partial because par
tially transferred files will remain in the new
temporary destination until they have a chance to
be completed. If DIR is a relative path, it is
relative to the destination directory.
You could use these features to synchronize files as much as possible
(even partial file transfers) over a slow link, without damaging the
"last known good" version. When a complete, newer version has been
trasferred, it can be dropped in place of the previous "known good"
version.
Bryan
--
===============================================================================
Bryan Wright |"If you take cranberries and stew them like
Physics Department | applesauce, they taste much more like prunes
University of Virginia | than rhubarb does." -- Groucho
Charlottesville, VA 22901 |
(434) 924-7218 | bryan(a)virginia.edu
===============================================================================
19 years, 7 months
RFC: cleaning up updates and updates-testing
by Bill Nottingham
At the moment, the Fedora updates tree is somewhat out of
hand (look, wow - 27G).
Does anyone have any specific and concrete objections to
removing older, superceded, updates?
Bill
19 years, 7 months
how about oneSIS? was: "Stateless Linux" project
by Josh England
Hello all,
I'd like to introduce to the list a piece of software that
just happens to do exactly what this project sounds like its trying to
accomplish. The software handles the root image of any number of nodes,
but allows for node/role specific behavior. It allows you to deploy
a local cache of the root image onto a local disk, and a bootloader
if desired. No matter what, though, the root filesystem is bit-for-bit
identical everywhere. Deviations are handled by creating soft links
to/from a tmpfs ramdisk. It really gives ultimate flexibility as to
how/where components of the filesystem should live (localdisk/ramdisk/NFS).
It can bootstrap the traditional NFSroot way (root=/dev/nfs) or use an
initrd to bootstrap in any number of creative ways. The framework is
in place to be able to easily boot over any network filesystem
(including Lustre when it arrives), or over any network medium
(including InfiniBand). It uses an initrd 'template' to create new
initrds with very customizable behavior.
The project is called oneSIS (http://onesis.sourceforge.net). We've used
it in production for running clusters for years, but I've just recently
(early this year) re-written it from scratch to make it cleaner and more
flexible. Grab the CVS version from sourceforge and check it out. It
makes everything the "Stateless linux" project is trying to do very, very
easy.
There is more information in the oneSIS software manual
(http://onesis.sourceforge.net/oneSIS-manual.pdf), and I currently
have a paper being reviewed for submission, or I'd send it also.
-JE
-----------------------------------------------
Josh England
Sandia National Laboratory, Livermore, CA
Visualization and Scientific Computing
email: jjengla(a)sandia.gov
phone: (925) 294-2076
Miles Sabin wrote,
I think this is a fine idea. I have a few questions tho' ...
Outside of largish corporates where clones are common, there are smaller
environments where machines are mostly (95%+, say) similar, but where
there are machine-by-machine variations which fall outside the set of
things which are covered by per-user homes or hardware auto-
configuration. For instance, differences in which services should be
running, their configuration, or minor kernel tweaks. Are such
environments outside the scope of this proposal, or is there some plan
to support per-machine or per-group/class deltas from a common
baseline?
One thing that's always stopped me from bothering with NFS mounted homes
is that for me a different machine quite often implies a different
role, hence that the stuff that's appropriate to be in my home varies.
This also tends to be a delta from a common baseline, so handling the
variability by having distinct users for each role doesn't seem like
quite the right answer. Caching doesn't seem likely to change this, and
the "recreate Joe's workstation" scenario in the document seems to
wander into this kind of territory. Do you have any thoughts about
handling this?
Slightly related to the previous two questions ... My laptop moves
between my home network, my work network, business-client networks,
connected by dialup ISP, and disconnected. In each scenario the
services running, their configuration, and what's appropriate for my
home dir vary slightly. Even tho' this is pretty clearly beyond the
scope of your proposal, there seems to be at least something in common:
the setup is mostly the same, but there are some small deltas. Would it
make sense to have a common mechanism to handle this?
I think all my questions boil down to: looks great for the 95% of stuff
which stays the same, but how do you deal with the 5% of stuff which
varies? And can you do it in a way which is 95% less hassle than
treating the machines as completely separate entities?
Cheers,
Miles
19 years, 7 months
glibc-2.3.3-51 breaks m4
by Steve G
Hi,
The latest glibc in rawhide breaks the compile of m4:
stackovf.c:108: warning: `__nothrow__' attribute ignored
stackovf.c: In function `setup_stackovf_trap':
stackovf.c:359: error: parse error before "__attribute__"
make[1]: *** [stackovf.o] Error 1
make: *** [all] Error 1
This seems to be centered on the __P macro which is only used in stackovf.c.
I have filed "glibc breaks the build" bug reports and they languish in bugzilla.
Does someone involved in glibc know that m4 is now broken due to something in the
headers? (glibc-2.3.3-45 works fine) Is glibc going to get fixed/reverted? Or is
m4 going to be fixed?
Thanks,
-Steve Grubb
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19 years, 7 months
RE: "Stateless Linux" project
by Erik LaBianca
>
> Hi,
>
> Red Hat engineering is starting a new project we're calling
> "stateless Linux" for lack of a better name - some components of this
> are already in Rawhide, and others will be appearing shortly.
>
> Appreciate feedback, especially from anyone who has time to try out
> the HOWTO. We expect the code to change quite a bit as issues and
> suggestions come in.
>
> Havoc
>
I too am thrilled to see this happening. It's this sort of technology
that has the potential to give linux a solid leg up on the competition
for both the desktop and the server.
I have a couple of questions.
1. Do I need to be running rawhide to test out the read-only root rpms
and the HOWTO?
2. Configuration management. I've been trying to extract my
configuration from running systems for a while now, but not really been
entirely successful. Typically the list of files to "watch" gets
unwieldy, or someone forgets to make the .orig file, or commit to cvs. I
think ideally a configuration management system would integrate rpm (to
know what files are config files) and cvs/subversion (to provide
revision control) in such a way that you have revision controlled
configuration files available off-system.
In a truly stateless system, you could just export all the config files
from CVS into the ramdisk on bootup.
I'd REALLY like to be able to edit files on a "live" system, and type a
command to "check in" my changes. I'd like to be able to use the same
system to show my the change history for a given file, and to ease
forward migration.
Is this sort of thing within the scope of this project?
3. I'd like to recommend looking at including the linux-vserver [1]
patches and tools with the OS distribution for server-side applications.
All the aforementioned technology would be an ideal fit in virtual
servers, and the ability to keep all your "logical servers" in virtual
sandboxes makes testing and deployment in smaller environments much
easier.
Statelessness would make virtual servers far more efficient, since you
could run them all off the same physical filesystem instead of making
hard link trees.
I'm already close to running "stateless servers" just by keeping them in
virtual machines, where I can shut them down and rsync them to a
different physical machine without leaving my desk.
Thanks
--erik
[1] http://www.linux-vserver.net/
19 years, 7 months