Distributed Filesystems for Linux?

zoneball asks: "What would you use for a distributed file system for Linux? I have several GNU/Linix machines running at home, and wanted to be able to see more or less the same file tree (especially all the ~user directories) regardless of which machine I'm connected to, and where the traversal into the distributed file system space is largely transparent for the end-user. Are there any URLs or documents that compare the features, bugs, road map, stability of these and other distributed filesystems? Which offers the best stability and protection from future obsolescence?"

Zoneball looked at 3 distributed filesystems, here are his thoughts:

" Open AFS was the solution I chose because I have the experience with it from college. For performance, AFS was built with an intelligent client-side cache, but did not support network disconnects nicely. But there are other alternatives out there.

Coda appears to be a research fork from an earlier version of AFS. Coda supports disconnected operations. But, the consensus on the Usenet (when I looked into filesystems a while ago) was that Coda was still too 'experimental.'

Intermezzo looks like it was started with the lessons learned from Coda, but (again from Usenet) people have said that it is still too unstable and it crashes their servers. The last 'news' on their site is dated almost a year ago, so I don't even know if it's being developed or not"

So if you were to recommend a distributed filesystem for Linux machines, would you choose one of the three filesystems listed here, or something else entirely?

Comments

Re:Format, Install Windows Server 2000 or 2003

[donkeyboy]

That should have read...

Format, Install Windows Server 2000 or 2003, Repeat

Obsolete ?

[CmdrTostado]

Which offers the best stability and protection from future obsolescence?

The best protection from future obsolescence is to use something that is already obsolete.

Re:rsync?

[brer_rabbit]

Hmm, perhaps I misunderstood the question there.

And here I thought you were going for "+5 funny". rsync as a DFS? Man, that's scary. Someone get this guy a job at Microsoft!

Gawd

[The Bungi]

I have several GNU/Linix machines

I'm vaguely sure this is a brand new affront to RMS, but I just can't put my finger on it.

Linix?

[CaptainSuperBoy]

Um.. Linix? Learn the name of your fucking operating system, to start off with. It's spelled L-U-N-I-X.

Not For Security

[fjin]

It would be very good to remember that NFS comes from:
Not
For
Security

Re:NFS

[PurpleFloyd]

ACLs are extremely useful. The ability to fine-tune permissions when necessary should not be dismissed because it can be misused; if you can drop a hammer on your foot, that doesn't make it a less useful tool. ACLs, properly managed, leave UNIX's user/group/all security settings in the dust. While they can be difficult to keep under control in some situations, this is the situation with almost all useful tools.

Wouldn't it be simpler and easier to manage if users had to sign up for computer time on a mainframe? Just think: you would only have to support one system! The benefits to security and maintinence would be enormous. Letting users have their own computers seems nice, but since it requires less planning and thinking (as a mainframe timeshare system requires) it will always become unmanageable. After all, there's no way to plan for the use of advanced tools. Why do you think many larger 1970s corporations running large computer implementations have a policy of not allowing any employee to access the mainframe without signing up first?!?

(Note for the humour impaired: I'm parodying the above author's style.)