From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Nov 22 17:21:10 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 009C616A4CE for ; Mon, 22 Nov 2004 17:21:10 +0000 (GMT) Received: from smtpout.mac.com (smtpout.mac.com [17.250.248.45]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D755A43D49 for ; Mon, 22 Nov 2004 17:21:09 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from cswiger@mac.com) Received: from mac.com (smtpin01-en2 [10.13.10.146]) by smtpout.mac.com (Xserve/MantshX 2.0) with ESMTP id iAMHL9Xg011975; Mon, 22 Nov 2004 09:21:09 -0800 (PST) Received: from [10.1.1.245] (nfw2.codefab.com [199.103.21.225] (may be forged)) (authenticated bits=0)iAMHL7Wf015970; Mon, 22 Nov 2004 09:21:09 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <6E5CDC16-3BE5-11D9-8AB7-000A95CCF8C4@san.rr.com> References: <6E5CDC16-3BE5-11D9-8AB7-000A95CCF8C4@san.rr.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v619) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Message-Id: Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Charles Swiger Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 12:21:07 -0500 To: Evan Sayer X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.619) cc: freebsd-questions@freeBSD.org Subject: Re: Diskless Servers X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 17:21:10 -0000 On Nov 21, 2004, at 12:47 PM, Evan Sayer wrote: > 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. It can be done, but there are enough gotcha's lurking that you should be careful. In particular, file locking [lockf(), flock(), fcntl()] via NFS is famously unreliable and you are strongly encouraged to use explicit dot-file-locking. The portion of sendmail which handles local delivery (mail.local) has some discussion of this, as does IMAP/POP software like the U-Wash stuff. Also be careful of stuff which uses the Berkeley DB. Serving HTTP from a diskless machine is likely to work OK without too many problems, although watch out for the apache scoreboard (which wants to be unique and preferably local). You can expect performance to be better with local drives than when using diskless systems. Performance for low amounts of traffic should be adequate. -- -Chuck