Nothing at all... when they work. We tried to give a workshop with 300 or so USB sticks which had been corrupted. Perhaps it just left a bad taste in my mouth but CD's seem like a more reliable medium :).
Although I think the plan is to try the USB sticks again for foss4g... with CD's as a backup plan. > > What was the problem with USB sticks? > > -S. > > > 2008/8/22 Justin Deoliveira <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> > > Hi all, > > This is something that has been floating around in my head for quite > some time and I wanted to throw some ideas out and see what people think > of them. > > So the use case here is be able to run GeoServer "live", that is > straight off a CD or a USB stick. The problem is however that, as many > know, GeoServer needs write access to be able to run. Now with a USB > stick with enough space on it this is not an issue, but after a recent > bad experience with USB sticks in labs, not having a CD to fall back on > is suicide in my opinion :). > > To find the instances I started GeoServer with an unwritable data > directory and it blew up with issues related to logging, writable file > checks, data like shapefiles locking and writing out index files, > and more. > > Past startup there is also the obvious fact that without a writable data > directory there would be no ability to save any changes made via the web > ui. Not ideal in a workshop situation. > > So... my thought about the easiest way to get around this situation > would be to somehow tell GeoServer to use the temporary O/S space, or > use the users home directory for the data dir. > > My first thought on how to do this is to use "special" values for the > GEOSERVER_DATA_DIR parameter. Something like: > > -DGEOSERVER_DATA_DIR=[TMP] or -DGEOSERVER_DATA_DIR=[HOME] > > Then the GeoServerDataDirectory.init() method would recognize these > values and set the data directory path accordingly. > > So continuing on with this, what about content inside the data > directory? If you start geoserver with an "empty" data directory it > still chokes. So my thought was to have GeoServerDataDirectory.init() > not only set the path based on the special values, but also initialize > the directory structure (only on the first run of course). > > It seems logical to me to just use the minimal data directory in this > case, which is just a skeleton catalog.xml and services.xml, and 4 sld > files. However... in a workshop situation this is also not ideal, since > we are going to want people to have a data directory which has been > pre-configured. > > So my thought to get around this would be to support an additional > startup parameter, called something like "GEOSERVER_DATA_DIR_TEMPLATE". > The value of the parameter is a path to a data directory... however > instead of using that path directly, the behavior is instead to copy the > contents of it to temporary O/S space / home directory. So startup would > look something like: > > -DGEOSERVER_DATA_DIR=[TMP] > -DGEOSERVER_DATA_DIR_TEMPLATE=E:\GeoServer\data_dir > > End of rant. Feedback welcome :). > > -JD > > -- > Justin Deoliveira > Software Engineer, OpenGeo > http://opengeo.org <http://opengeo.org/> > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's > challenge > Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win > great prizes > Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in > the world > http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ > <http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/> > _______________________________________________ > Geoserver-devel mailing list > [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]> > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geoserver-devel > > -- Justin Deoliveira Software Engineer, OpenGeo http://opengeo.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ Geoserver-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geoserver-devel
