richr@ai.etl.army.mil (Richard Rosenthal) (07/19/88)
I want to bring some organization to UNIX file systems among several machines that use NFS. I am seeking your advice. Say I have several machines: red, green, and blue Each has a somewhat usual hierarchy of directory names, for example: /bin /dev /etc /lib /local /src /sys /tmp /usr Each machine is going to mount file systems from each of the other two. Question: What is a good, uniform, consistent, and easy to roam method of naming the file systems? How about on machine "red": /green /blue If so, then where do these directories enter on machines "green" and "blue"? Thanks. -- Richard Rosenthal Internet: richr@ai.etl.army.mil Engineer Topographic Labs UUCP: ...!ames!ai.etl.army.mil!richr Ft. Belvoir, VA 22060-5546 BITNET: richr%ai.etl.army.mil@CUNYVM +1 202 355 2830 CSNET: richr%ai.etl.army.mil@RELAY.CS.NET
mlandau@bbn.com (Matt Landau) (07/19/88)
Well, the convention most people around here have adopted is to give each
machine a /nfs directory on which remote filesystems get mounted, and then
mount things on /nfs/{machine}/{filesystem}.
Each machine also has its *own* filesystems linked into /nfs/{ownname},
and all symbolic links point into the /nfs hierarchy for the local
machine. This scheme provides and unambiguous name for every point in
every filesystem on every machine, and prevents you from inadvertantly
pointing links into the wrong filesystem.
If you don't understand how this can happen, consider what happens if you
mount /usr from red, and it has a symbolic link to /usr/local. If you've
mounted /usr/local from blue, the link is valid, but what's pointed to isn't
what the link's creator on red expected. If the link is instead made to
point to /nfs/red/usr/local, you don't trip across this problem.
For compatibility with SunOS 4.0, you might want to use /net as the NFS
mount point instead of /nfs. SunOS 4 by default uses /net as the mount
point for hostname-based mounts performed by the automounter.
--
Matt Landau The happiest cold and lonely guy
mlandau@bbn.com stuck in the Yukon without a dog.