RE: [9fans] plan 9 ports to unix (including libdraw)

["Nigel Roles" <nigel@9fs.org>]

> First of all, we need a robust file server!
> I want to shift our file server to fossil+venti, however, I'm still
> hasitating. This is because: 1) there are some negative experiences
> the users report. 2) no clear document to describe how to install it.
> 3) Is it really safe to use it as fossil+venti+auth server on one
> machine?
>
> Etec, etc
>
> Kenji

I've not had any experience of fossil+venti as to it's reliability,
but I would refer back to previous conversations here about disk
reliability. I'm nervous about committing important data to modern
disk drives, especially IDE drives.

Plan 9 offers three choices in increasing cost:

1. IDE drives with devfs mirroring
2. SCSI drives with devfs mirroring
3. DVD jukebox.

Unfortunately, I can't cost justify anything other than (1). This
has the feel of not actually providing much more reliability. and
recovering from a disk failure would be a homebrew affair, so
isn't quite good enough.

What would be equivalent on cost, and offer a reasonable recovery
route would be hardware RAID 5, so the BIOS can do the recovery
for me if needed.

I'm trying to secure my data, not put it at risk, so writing a
hardware RAID 5 driver for Plan 9 is not a good route to take,
even if I had the time just now!

There is excellent RAID 5 support in Linux, and reasonable (and
perhaps more trustworthy) support in FreeBSD. Thus a port of venti
to Lunix would offer people a means to secure their data without
having to give up on fossil or all the other nice things in Plan 9.

So we'll have less of the talk about rats thank you very much. There
are good reasons for taking the best of both I would have thought.