[NBLUG/talk] File System Choice for distributed sometimes disconnected systems?

[Troy Arnold]

On Sat, Jan 28, 2006 at 07:04:47PM -0800, Augie Schwer wrote:
> 
> Also depending on where I am, I may not have a dependable Internet
> connection or one at all, so how can you keep /home up to date or use
> it at all with no network connection?

A couple of years ago I wrote this nifty script called tsync, which uses
unison and rdiff-backup to keep three $HOME's in sync and backed up.  It
works ok, but I need to manually stay on top of which $HOME is in what
state.  Blech.  Well, along comes this guy James W. Anderson and steals my
name :)  Fortunately, his tools are quite a bit more ambitious:
http://tsyncd.sourceforge.net/

I've been watching it, but haven't given it a spin yet.

> 2) Keeping /home in Subversion control and doing updates and commits.

I keep portions of /home under Subversion.  It's definitely a useful thing,
but I find that my files are too dynamic to use it as the basis of a
syncing system.

> But the most promising so far seems to be coda, an AFS descendant that is
> a distributed file system that offers disconnected operation, but I need
> to investigate it further.

Yeah, coda looked great to me also.  I even built kernel support for it,
for a time, but I never used it.  I'd love to hear war stories.  Eric
mentioned AFS in passing after one of the LUG meetings, so maybe he'd
have something to say.

-t