Re: sharing home directories for UML's

[Felipe Sateler <fsateler@gmail.com>]

Benedict Verheyen wrote:

> Felipe Sateler schreef:
>> 
>> Then mount-bind them as many times you need. Note that the mounts need to
>> be done outside the uml servers, since you need to reach the original
>> directories.
>> For example, suppose you have the following structure:
>> /srv/uml1
>> /srv/uml2
>> ...
>> Then, to mount the local home directories to the uml dirs you would do:
>> mount --bind /home/user /srv/uml1/home/user
>> mount --bind /home/user /srv/uml2/home/user
>> ...
> 
> The UML filesystem is inside a file so you only see a file and no
> filesystem. You could mount the file (mount -o loop root_fs /mnt) and
> then do the mount but you're not supposed to run an uml file with the
> file being mounted somewhere.

Ah, I wasn't aware that was how UML worked. I assumed it was just a chroot. 

> 
> So that solution won't work.

Indeed

> I'm currenly looking at these options:
> * COW funtionality

That wouldn't work either, since COW usually is done on mounted filesystems
too. Also, COW would not make the changes made in one UML instance
available to the others.

> * mount -t smbfs and thus having to run samba on the UML that has the
> home directories

That is a possibility. NFS is another one.

> * hostfs

This seems like the Right Way (according to google). There is even a
tutorial on how to do this on UML's SourceForge page:
http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/hostfs.html


-- 

  Felipe Sateler