From: Kurt H Maier <khm@sciops.net>
To: Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com>
Cc: TUHS main list <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>,
Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] /bin vs /sbin
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2020 19:27:54 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20200722022754.GC90608@wopr> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAEoi9W7J3GfPSZ2fduVZj7NfwbTgmE049XcG1AU_z-eW=5D4cQ@mail.gmail.com>
On Tue, Jul 21, 2020 at 09:44:31PM -0400, Dan Cross wrote:
>
> When I first came on the scene, there was a convention that I thought
> worked well: the "dataless" node. I have no idea why it was called that; I
> suppose because most interesting data was on a centrally managed file
> server. Anyway, this was under SunOS 4: the idea was that each node had a
> small disk; enough to hold / and swap, but mounted /usr, /usr/local and
> user directories from a file server. So commonly used stuff (/bin/csh, ls,
> etc etc) all came from a local disk, while everything else was shared.
> Disks in workstations were small and basically turn-key so that we didn't
> back them up: if one crashed, oh well: throw a new one in it and reimage /.
> Swap was transient anyway. A variation was to have an owning-user's home
> directory on the node if the local disk was big enough. Sometimes there'd
> be a /scratch partition for bulk storage that persisted across reboots
> (/tmp came from tmpfs and was a swap-backed RAM disk). We'd back up local
> home dirs and maybe the scratch directories.
>
> In our network, we used `amd` and NIS (YP!) to get access to everyone's
> home dir on every node.
>
> I rather liked the overall setup; it was nice. It became a deprecated
> configuration on the move to Solaris 2.x: a workstation was either diskfull
> or diskless. The idea of a compromise between the two extremes went away.
>
> - Dan C.
This is how we run our clusters, but instead of NFS-mounting the system
directories, it fetches a cpio archive and unpacks it into a RAM disk,
then switches root to that. Any local disk is mounted as scratch space,
home directories come from an NFS server, and the main working
filesystem is a high-performance distributed filesystem. It works
exceptionally well at the cost of whatever RAM is used to store the root
filesystem -- these days, negligible. AFS is available but not much
engaged by our users. Everything boots over PXE and entirely changing
the purpose and loadout of a computer is one or two commands away. It's
very pleasant.
khm
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2020-07-22 2:35 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 24+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2020-07-21 17:55 Grant Taylor via TUHS
2020-07-21 18:15 ` Warner Losh
2020-07-21 22:42 ` David Arnold
2020-07-22 3:33 ` Warner Losh
2020-07-21 18:22 ` arnold
2020-07-21 18:33 ` Warner Losh
2020-07-21 18:43 ` Larry McVoy
2020-07-22 1:16 ` tytso
2020-07-22 3:27 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2020-07-22 3:35 ` Warner Losh
2021-01-27 5:56 ` Greg A. Woods
2021-01-27 19:06 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2021-01-27 22:22 ` Warner Losh
2021-01-27 22:35 ` Greg A. Woods
2021-01-28 5:24 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2020-07-22 1:44 ` Dan Cross
2020-07-22 2:17 ` Jon Forrest
2020-07-22 2:20 ` Adam Thornton
2020-07-22 13:30 ` Clem Cole
2020-07-22 13:43 ` Richard Salz
2020-07-22 2:27 ` Kurt H Maier [this message]
2020-07-21 19:24 ` Clem Cole
2020-07-22 13:39 ` Clem Cole
2021-01-29 23:50 ` Chris Hanson
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