From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 7698 invoked by uid 1002); 12 May 2003 16:01:58 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gentoo-dev-help@gentoo.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-dev@gentoo.org Received: (qmail 6422 invoked from network); 12 May 2003 16:01:58 -0000 Reply-To: From: "Stuart Herbert" To: Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 16:56:37 +0100 Organization: Generic NQS Project Message-ID: <010601c3189f$152fb2a0$c000a8c0@Churchill> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook, Build 10.0.4510 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165 Importance: Normal Subject: [gentoo-dev] FW: rsync etiquette follow-up X-Archives-Salt: e371e8d0-f240-4b86-b7f0-65c2e5b1be81 X-Archives-Hash: c06bba7ff0964cdbaa0a91ab51a69576 Dear all, I originally sent the comments below to GWN as feedback on the recent = call for rsync etiquette. Kurt Lieber [klieber@gentoo.org] asked me to = forward on to this list, for further discussion. Please be gentle - this is my first posting to the list ;-) Best regards, Stu -- -----Original Message----- From: Stuart Herbert [mailto:stuart@gnqs.org]=20 Sent: 09 May 2003 11:24 To: 'gwn-feedback@gentoo.org' Cc: 'stuart@gnqs.org' Subject: rsync etiquette follow-up Hi there, I read with great interest your article on the need for rsync etiquette. I'm sure lots of people have already written to you making the same = point. I'd like to add my voice to this point. Gentoo's 'emerge' is a wonderful tool in many ways - but when it comes = to a site containing multiple machines, improvements in its design could help reduce the load on your rsync servers. I run four Gentoo boxes at the moment, and they're all connected to the Internet through a single firewall configured with masquerading. If I = were to rsync each machine just once a day, I wonder whether it would look = like one machine had rsync'd four times from the point of view of the Gentoo rsync mirror that I use? Anyway, whenever I install a new package onto a machine, it is important = to my work that *each* of these machines has the same version of the = package. The machines are different x86 architectures, so building a binary = package on the one machine isn't my preferred choice. The whole point of using Gentoo is that each machine runs code that is specifically optimised for = the hardware. To achieve this, there's no getting away from it. I have to 'emerge = rsync' on each machine, and 'emerge '. The 'emerge rsync' is there to ensure that each machine picks up the same version of both the package, = and its dependencies. This can be done via cron once every couple of days. = But it still means that I end up hitting your rsync mirrors *once* for every Gentoo machine I run. I also end up hitting your distfile mirrors = *once* per machine as well. I know that I could run an rsync mirror just for internal use - and that would help a lot. Running a distfiles mirror is a lot less practical. = It would be much better if there was a way to share '/usr/portage' across multiple machines. You can't do this safely via NFS. If two machines = try to download the same distfile at the same time, they interfere with each other. =20 It'd be much better if emerge could be changed to a client/server model, where the emerge command becomes a client that contacts the (possibly remote) emerge server to do all the downloading and rsyncing. For = people running both client/server on the same machine, there's no noticable difference. For people like me, trying to run a site of machines, I'm = able to reduce the amount of load I place on your rsync servers and your = distfile servers. This gives me another advantage. I don't have to have a (potentially = large) /usr/portage/distfiles on each machine. If three of my machines are clients, and the server only runs on the fourth machine, I can setup a = cron job to clear out /usr/portage/distfiles on each of the clients on a = nightly basis - and keep my diskpage usage down. (As an aside, it'd be great to = see /usr/portage moved into /var. One of my few true disappointments with Gentoo is having to have /usr mounted read-write a lot of the time) I hope that I've explained it right - and that some intrepid emerge developer will take on the task. And soon. Best regards, Stu -- -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list