From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Nov 22 00:42:31 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 10AA316A4CE for ; Mon, 22 Nov 2004 00:42:31 +0000 (GMT) Received: from outside.taborandtashell.net (sub18-33.member.dsl-only.net [63.105.18.33]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 38B6743D46 for ; Mon, 22 Nov 2004 00:42:30 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from tkelly-freebsd-questions@taborandtashell.net) Received: (qmail 387 invoked from network); 21 Nov 2004 16:42:27 -0800 Received: from unknown (HELO ?192.168.0.9?) (tkelly@192.168.0.9) by 192.168.0.2 with AES256-SHA encrypted SMTP; 21 Nov 2004 16:42:27 -0800 Message-ID: <41A135EE.5040601@taborandtashell.net> Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 16:42:22 -0800 From: Tabor Kelly User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.9 (X11/20041112) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Evan Sayer , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <6E5CDC16-3BE5-11D9-8AB7-000A95CCF8C4@san.rr.com> In-Reply-To: <6E5CDC16-3BE5-11D9-8AB7-000A95CCF8C4@san.rr.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: Diskless Servers X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list Reply-To: tkelly-freebsd-questions@taborandtashell.net List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 00:42:31 -0000 Evan Sayer wrote: > Hello- > Is it a good idea to run a mail server or web server diskless? The > reason I want to do this is so that all of our server's files will be in > one place which will make backups more convenient. Basically I am > thinking of running one NFS/TFTP file server with disks, and those disks > will contain the partitions for a web server, a mail server, and a login > server which will all boot diskless. Is this safe and ok performance > wise? Thanks. So, mbox format mail files can not be run over NFS because NFS does not implement posix standard file locking. You could run courier or qmail with maildir however. I use a patched version of qmail (and I love it), your can read about my experiences here (please note, I haven't quite finished this document yet and it is still a little rough around the edges): (http://tabor.taborandtashell.net/serversetup/qmail.html). As for a web server, I don't know of any file locking problems, although for some specific implementations I would presume that they would pop up (ex: anything to do with a Berkley DB). So, in short the answer to your question is: depends. Note: I am not an expert unix system administrator, nor have I ever had a disk less server, I have however been monkeying with unix for about 8 years now.