:: Re: [DNG] FW: support for merged /u…
Top Page
Delete this message
Reply to this message
Author: Didier Kryn
Date:  
To: dng
Subject: Re: [DNG] FW: support for merged /usr in Debian
Le 05/01/2016 20:25, Rob Owens a écrit :
> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Didier Kryn" <kryn@???>
>> Le 05/01/2016 15:59, Rob Owens a écrit :
>>> I have customers who use a shared /usr among several zLinux
>>> systems, and the reason is cost savings.
>>      For my information: They don't share rootfs? How do they manage
>> package upgrade?
> I just spoke to some coworkers and I have to revise my story a bit.  The
> short answer is I don't know if these particular customers share the entire
> rootfs, just /usr, or some subset of /usr.

>
> There are mainframes that are used to host thousands of zLinux systems.
> For example, they may provide web servers to customers. In this
> scenario, they will attempt to share as much disk as possible between
> systems. The shared disk will typically be read-only on all systems except
> for one (perhaps a management system which is used to perform updates).
> Each system of course needs some read-write space, but the more shared
> disk it can utilize, the better (because that is cheaper and easier to
> manage).
>
> So are they sharing /usr and owning individual root filesystems? I'm
> not sure what these particular customers are doing. I can imagine
> scenarios where having that ability would be beneficial, but I'm not
> sure if these customers are actually doing it. I do know that they make
> heavy use of read-only disk sharing, and that taking two separate
> directories and dumping them into one will reduce granularity, which can
> make it more difficult to optimize disk sharing.
>
> -Rob
>

     I have installed farms of diskless single-board computers. Each 
group shares the Debian Wheezy OS installed on an NFS server. Most files 
and directories must be shared but some must not: /run and parts of 
/var/lib. It is delicate and tricky to craft which subdirectory of 
/var/lib is shared and which is not.


     /etc/resolv.conf is symlinked to a file in /run which is created 
during the initramfs step. In principle resolv.conf could be shared 
because they are all in the same LAN, but this configuration avoids 
overwriting continuously the same file.


     Didier