Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 21:38:25 +0000 From: Nik Clayton <nik@freebsd.org> To: mobile@freebsd.org Subject: Mobile FreeBSD Message-ID: <20000210213824.A45875@kilt.nothing-going-on.org>
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How do folks,
I've got a laptop running FreeBSD with no problems (I can hear the crys
of envy from the crowd now).
I'm kicking around a few ideas as to how to most effectively use a
Unix mobile computer, and would welcome any input from everyone else.
In my ideal world, I've got a server, holding home directories, mail
store, common applications, and so on. Then there are several client
machines sharing files with NFS, possibly using NIS, and so on.
For preference, I'd like to be able to pull the laptop off this network
for periods of time, and have things just work. Specifically, this
means applications that would normally be shared, home directories still
available, mail store active, and so on.
Some of this is do-able. For example, making the laptop a slave NIS
server should keep NIS working while it's disconnected.
The tricky bit, as far as I can see, is going to be the file sharing.
In particular, when the laptop is plugged back in to the network, any
changes made to shared files while the laptop was away (regardless of
whether those changes were made on the laptop or on the network) should
be integrated.
At the moment, I'm kludging my way round this with a script that I run
before the laptop is removed, and after it returns. This script just
rsyncs some necessary directories (home directories, that sort of thing),
and sends any mail that's been written on the road and queued on the
laptop, and so on.
This works, but it's a bit of a hack, and it also means that there's a
delay between getting the laptop back to the network, and being able to
do any useful work with it (an rsync of something like the CVS tree can
take 15 minutes, even over an uncongested 100Mb network). Things like
CVSup don't really help that much, as the CVS tree is only a small part
of the data that's transferred, and CVSup falls back to the rsync
algorithm on non-CVS files anyway).
From what I've read, Coda might be able to help in this sort of situation,
but it looks like quite a large sledgehammer for this particular nut, and
I believe it's really going to require keeping track of -current to be
effective -- if I can avoid that, I'd like to, as I don't really have
the resources to effectively track -current.
For the time being, I don't think there's really an effective solution
to this sort of problem. But I'd be interested in other people's
perspectives on the problem.
N
--
If you want to imagine the future, imagine a tennis shoe stamping
on a penguin's face forever.
--- with apologies to George Orwell
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