[lug] NFS cross-mounts

[David L. Anselmi]

Vince Dean wrote:
> Are NFS cross-mounts evil even if you use the automounter?

I don't know.  I've heard similar concerns from admins who seem to be speaking from outdated 
experience.  Understanding your boot dependencies probably goes a long way (e.g., all machines will 
make their exports available before they try any NFS mounts).

> There is a larger issue here: whether it makes sense to have such cyclic
> dependencies, especially involving desktop machines, at all.  That
> arrangement puts us in a situation where shutting down one machine will
> inconvenience an unknown number of users on other machines.

I'd really like to find a network file system where I can spread data across all the workstations in 
an office and as long as a certain minimum are available the data is available.  Lustre and the one 
Zooko worked on have some of those features but aren't designed for a small office.  GPFS (from IBM) 
has been used to do similar, but even if it's just right it's too expensive.

> You could make a strong case that machines should only depend on services which are provided by
> carefully-maintained servers in machine rooms, and that the dependencies should should be simple
> and should form an acyclic graph.

Seems to me that's just a trade of cost and availability.

Dave