Re: [9fans] standalone cpu server wiki

[<vdharani@infernopark.com>]

>> - fossil is not robust yet. (isnt it a bit uncommon in plan 9 world?)
>
> I think it is now as robust as kfs, which I never considered very
> robust.  We're now running everything in our lab off of fossil.  We did
> have to fix a spate of problems over the last month to get it there
> though.  There's also a lost block problem that we haven't found, i.e.,
> blocks that should get reused but don't.
>
>> - when you choose fossil during installation, plan 9 prepares fossil
>> file server and uses it. you need to setup venti and use it as the
>> backend later on manually. the moment you run 'snap -a', fossil can no
>> more work on its own. it has flushed its data blocks to venti. so,
>> venti is needed from now on. you may be better off if venti is in
>> another machine. if it is in the same machine, you must have
>> configured it properly so that venti can be used at runtime. plan 9
>> server may not boot if the machine is configured to get a dynamically
>> allocated address from a pool of IP addresses from a DHCP server, is
>> there is any misconfiguration. localhost may be used but one needs to
>> explicity configure it. (cant we make it default?)
>
> You don't need to set up venti.  What you set with fossil only is the
> same as you get with kfs only; a not backed up file system.  I don't
if fossil crashes, is there a way to recover?

> want to make venti automatic yet because its still problematic.  I'ld
> rather people have to know what's going on to set that up.
agreed.

> I also dislike the fact that 'snap -a' makes fossil totally dependent
> on venti.  We used to have our main fossil and venti as separate
> machines but this forced us to put them both on one.  Rsc, jmk, and I
cant venti be in another machine? is it necessary that venti needs to run
on the same machine as fossil? i thought it should be fine.

>> - we must remove fossil from installation option as a new user may
>> find it very difficult.
> Actually, I'm going to take out kfs.  We don't need two in the
> installation and kfs is the one that's falling behind.
in that case, i think we need to explicity specify which part of "Setting
up Fossil" is done automatically by the installation and which part needs
to be done by the user. may be a couple of lines in installation procedure
could say something like "plan 9 has a nice archiving mechanism called
venti with which fossil file system could be backed up and restored when a
problem occurs. please read about how to setup venti and set up venti
manually later."

if the installation procedure is not going to change in the near term and
if no one else is working on these issues, i can try out a fossil based
installation and write a document which may be useful for someone new. if
it is acceptable, we could add it to the wiki document list. any
suggestions?

thanks
dharani