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Distributed Filesystem for Disconnected Operation?

juraj asks: "I'm trying to achieve the following setup: I have two offices connected via a relatively slow ADSL line, and I want a shared fileserver between the offices. I have VPN using IPSec ready, so security is less of a concern, but simply mounting a filesystem (via Samba or NFS) from one office to another is not a solution because of the speed. Also, the ADSL line is sometimes not only slow, but also disconnected. I've tried the CODA distributed filesystem to achieve replication, so that both offices have local copies of their files. The problem is, that the CODA filesystem is just a research project: it is unstable, with the venus daemon constantly falling, and sometimes when recovering from the disconnected state, one side does not recognize the changes and they are simply not propagated. Have you had any good experiences with CODA? Which versions do you use? What kind of setup did you have? How is it configured? I've also heard about OpenAFS, but similar to CODA, I've learned it is unusable in a real environment. Is there any real solution to my problem? Are there any decent solid free distributed file systems for Linux or the BSDs?"

9 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. This question by Molina+the+Bofh · · Score: 3, Interesting

    is very good, and I was thinking of something like that for my mailservers. That way, I'd have 2 different machines in 2 locations, and [maildir] boxes in both. When message arrive in one, any one, it is copied to the other. When erased, same thing.

    Both servers running at the same MX. So users could choose the server 1 or server 2 according to the location. And witch among them, in case one network goes down.

    Although it sounds simple, I don't know any simple solution to that. Rsync won't work, as there wouldn't not be a master server. Both would have the same preference, so no server depends on the other. That's the goal.

    --

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    Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
  2. Novell ifolder by Why+Should+I · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Haven't actually looked into this to any great defree, but is Novel's iFolder an option ?

    It's opensourced even and available on Novel Forge.

  3. I think you _could_ use rsync by tcheud · · Score: 2, Interesting

    it looks like a simple shell script with rsync will do it...
    http://lists.samba.org/archive/rsync/2001-O ctober/ 000430.html

  4. Re:OpenAFS unusable in a "real" environment? by passthecrackpipe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yeah - OpenAFS is *still* really the only way to go for multi plafrom, disconnected, distributed filesystems. It positively *rocks* - the only downside from my perspective is the unwieldy kerberos management environment, but i am pretty sure that has more to do with my own lazyness and ignorance (wrt learning proper kerberos instead of simply rattling off the HOWTO) as opposed to a fundemental flaw in the system.

    --
    People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
  5. Re:Unison by Richard_at_work · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Have a look at the Unison article on BSDstudio (link) for an indepth introduction to using Unison in this manner.

  6. use AFS by stonebeat.org · · Score: 3, Interesting

    use the real AFS from IBM. work very nicely.

  7. Re:intermezzo! by mattmcl · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Normally, I stay away from Microsoft as much as possible, but you did say that you'd be willing to spend some money... At a previous job, we were all Win2k/XP and Active Directory...we setup Microsoft DFS that kept a replicated copy of the network file share on a secondary domain controller at a remote location. The primary reason was to have an off-site copy of everything in the event of a disaster of some sort, but, if the primary domain controller/file server went down, users would not even notice - changes would just be saved to the remote server and replicated back when the primary came back online. If the network went down, it would sync up seamlessly when it came back online. It really did work surprisingly well. If you're already a Windows shop, you can't go wrong.

  8. Re:tramp by Chaostrophy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Use the tramp package, it automates grabbing files via ssh (through multiple hosts), so you edit localy. Very hand, I really liked it.

    --
    Plato seems wrong to me today
  9. Re:use AFS=OpenAFS by oli_freyr · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm no expert, but I became curious about the difference between IBM AFS and OpenAFS and it seems that they are the same.

    This means I will probably check it out for my next fileserver project... ;)