From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 23527 invoked from network); 22 Jul 2020 02:35:57 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 22 Jul 2020 02:35:57 -0000 Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 97A1E9C8FC; Wed, 22 Jul 2020 12:35:52 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 838F89C8DD; Wed, 22 Jul 2020 12:34:42 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id CCF4C9C8DD; Wed, 22 Jul 2020 12:34:38 +1000 (AEST) X-Greylist: delayed 397 seconds by postgrey-1.36 at minnie.tuhs.org; Wed, 22 Jul 2020 12:34:36 AEST Received: from wopr.sciops.net (wopr.sciops.net [216.126.196.60]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AEA189C8C3 for ; Wed, 22 Jul 2020 12:34:36 +1000 (AEST) Received: (qmail 92113 invoked by uid 1001); 21 Jul 2020 19:27:54 -0700 Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2020 19:27:54 -0700 From: Kurt H Maier To: Dan Cross Message-ID: <20200722022754.GC90608@wopr> Mail-Followup-To: Dan Cross , Warner Losh , TUHS main list , Grant Taylor References: <862d8a34-456d-33c1-7ef0-58c6e8089de9@tnetconsulting.net> <202007211822.06LIMBJ4018831@freefriends.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Subject: Re: [TUHS] /bin vs /sbin X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.26 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Cc: TUHS main list , Grant Taylor Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" 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