Re: [9fans] Plan9 topology

[John Floren <slawmaster@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 8:15 PM, Duke Normandin <dukeofperl@ml1.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Jan 2011, John Floren wrote:
>
>> On 1/13/2011 7:42 PM, Duke Normandin wrote:
>>
>> > What is Venti again?
>>
>> Venti is the archival storage for Plan 9. Basically, new files and
>> changes to files get written to the Fossil file system. If Venti exists,
>> those changes get written to Venti; Venti never deletes anything and
>> works on a rather cool block-coalescing system. I highly recommend
>> reading the paper.
>
> I'll look for it. Sounds something like a RAID system to me. Or
> `vinum' on FreebSD.
>
>> On a system with a small disk, it's a good idea to go without Venti,
>> because of the space required. Fossil will then hold all your files,
>> meaning you don't get the daily snapshots, but you probably won't miss
>> those immediately--there's plenty of time to set up a system with a
>> bigger disk for Venti if you like Plan 9, or you could even add Venti
>> after the fact by sticking in another disk.
>
> What is the minimum HDD capacity required to run an Auth/cpu/fs server
> with Venti support?

There's no hard and fast rule, really, but your Fossil partition needs
to be at least big enough to hold the full distribution, and Venti
should be big enough to hold everything you ever intend to put on the
system.

I wouldn't try it with less than a 20 GB disk, with say 2 GB for
Fossil and the rest for Venti; unless you start storing music and
video on there, that should give you plenty of room to work with.

John