Re: [9fans] How to maintain a venti server

["Steve Simon" <steve@quintile.net>]

> + How can I check the status of my venti server easily? The only
> option I could find is reading through ventis status pages. Although
> I couldn't read from that with abaco or hget...
> 
You should be able to use hget or abaco to get venti's status.

> + How can I archive my venti? Heiko on this list mentioned burning
> the arenas to a disk. Is there something like dump9660 for this? As
> dump9660 works on a file basis only I guess it cannot be used.
>
arenas are created in 512Mb chunks so they will fit nicely onto a cdrom disk
for backups. This combined with a mirrored pair (or more) of disks
is enough to protect your server. If the machine burns down you can
rebuild the venti arenas, indexes and fossil all from just these CDROMS,
though this might take a few hours.

> + Am I supposed to run maintenance tasks of ventiaux(8) on a regular
> basis? If yes when and which?
> 
I never do any maintainence on venti, and virtually none on fossil either.

> + I want to use a venti server as backup server for a some machines
> in my network, plan9 and others. What are my best options?

Difficult to know, NFS should work I think, though I have never used it
and it may need a tweek to allow it to serve /n/dump (or a dump like vacfs).
also I don't think plan9 supports NFS3 so it would be as secure as... NFS.

Alternatively you can use the CIFS server (aquarela) to access
dumps from DOS and Linux, though it struggles with windows. This
has had some work recently so you may want to check it works with
your environment before commiting to it.

-Steve