Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

sm-discuss - [SM-Discuss] Source Mage network install

sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Public SourceMage Discussion List

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Casey Harkins <charkins AT upl.cs.wisc.edu>
  • To: sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [SM-Discuss] Source Mage network install
  • Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 17:11:18 -0500 (CDT)

I have a number of questions/ideas I would like to run by everyone
to get their feedback on. First a little background . . .

Over the next two weeks I will be planning and testing an upgrade to our
existing Linux workstations and LAN servers. Our primary desktop
machines are all currently running Mandrake. Each network is centered
around NFS (for home directories and shared OpenOffice documents), NIS
for authentication and a Sybase database server for our internal
CRM/sales automation software. There are two of these networks at
different locations.

I plan on moving this all to a Source Mage based system using LDAP for
authentication and *something* for a networked filesystem.

1) Which grimoire: devel, testing, stable or custom?

The first issue is which grimoire to use. In an ideal world stable would
be the right choice, but missing sources could cause endless headaches.
Further, one of these networks is a good 600 miles away and I cringe at
the thought of an eventual gcc2 to gcc3 upgrade while I'm a days journey
away. Would it be enough to place gcc on hold, or will this not work to
avoid the gcc switch? I'm leaning towards using the devel grimoire
because the sources are usually readily available and the gcc switch is
already completed (well, sorta).

The other option is to maintain a custom grimoire, this is my plan
eventually once I have time to write some tools for doing so. My idea is
to maintain full control over grimoire through a menu driven interface,
only selected spells get exported to the custom grimoire, and versions
need to be explicity OK-ed to pass through to the custom grimoire.
Dependecies would be resolved automatically and optional dependecies
could be removed or converted to required depencecies to force a desired
configuration.

2) Localized source

I would like to force workstations to only use source from the LAN
server. This could be done by sharing /var/spool/sorcery as read-only
and summoning all spells on the server.

A while back I remember someone mentioning a BASE_URL variable that
could be set in /etc/sorcery/local/config, how does this variable work.
Is the full SOURCE_URL appended to the BASE_URL or just the SOURCE
variable? If this URL fails, does it try the normal SOURCE_URL? The
advantage I see to using this approach, as I can use this on the LAN
server to download all source from an FTP server on the second network.
This allows me to keep a single repository of software, including a
custom grimoire if that path is chosen. The individual workstations
could still mount /var/spool/sorcery from the LAN server.

3) Which network file system?

This one is a tough, as I'm really only familar with NFS under Linux.
I've obviously used SMB on Windows networks, but how well does it work
on a Linux only network? Is there any secure network filesystem solution
that doesn't involve Kerberos that people have used? Can SMB be stunneled?

---

That's good enough for now. Any ideas, thoughts, flames, comments will
be appreciated. Back to LDAP docs...


-casey






Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page