Re: networked filesystems
>I have just configured a simple network with one harddiskless computer
>that boots from a floppy and mounts a remote root through nfs.
It should make administration much easier:)
>Now my questions:
>- which other alternatives are there? I have heard that nfs has a big
>overlay. I have also heard about nbd.
I've never heard of ndb, but I know the LTSP project uses nfs. They also allow
the use of NIS to manage passwords and such.
>- is it true, or can you configure your client so, that when using a
>networked filesystem, it tries to cache as much as possible in memory?
Don't know.
>- what kind of ethernet is suiteble for a good (fast) working client? How
>much difference is there between 100Mb and Full Duplex (I may ask the same
>here, excuse for my veil of ignorance)? Will a server at 200MHz
>(i586) work fine?
That depends on what you want to do. I remember hearing something like 30+
clients running xterms and FVWM95 on a 10mb network with PLENTY of bandwidth to
spare. I never recall LAN bandwith being a problem. Of course, if you plan on
streaming video/audio, that's another case!
The server is where you need to be careful. You need to determine what
applications the users need to run. Netscape was always troublesome as the
memory leaks pose a serious problem to the server. We had scripts that would
look for "stray" netscape processes every half hour or so. If you plan on
running KDE or GNOME, you might need a more powerful server. What you'll need to
do is calcuate the number of users and mulitply it by their memory/CPU use.
Hope that helps,
Scott
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