From: Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com>
To: Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.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 21:44:31 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAEoi9W7J3GfPSZ2fduVZj7NfwbTgmE049XcG1AU_z-eW=5D4cQ@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CANCZdfpMORPnd1A3ZvRuP_isATpRCB8eBse3ucQYCDxMgwZ7kA@mail.gmail.com>
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On Tue, Jul 21, 2020 at 2:35 PM Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 21, 2020 at 12:23 PM <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
>
>> [snip]
>
> The idea was that /etc held things specific to a box, while /bin, /sbin,
>> /usr could be remote mounted from a server. This is also when /home
>> came into practice as the place to hold home directories.
>>
>> This avoided having umpteen zillion copies of the same files
>> (executables, man pages, libraries, etc.) since they could be mounted
>> read-only from one or a few servers. At the time, disk space was not
>> nearly as cheap as it is now.
>>
>
> A big cost savings in having 20 diskless workstations was that you didn't
> need the 2-4gb of disks for each individual one, but instead could have one
> copy of the 100MB-200MB of the core OS. When. X started getting libraries
> out the wazoo with toolkit wars, it saved even more. IIRC, the Sun 3/50's
> ethernet port was faster than its disk port, so your diskless workstation
> could be faster than one with a disk (assuming the network wasn't
> overloaded).
>
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.
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2020-07-22 1:47 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 [this message]
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
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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