On Tue, 14 Nov 2000, Paul Lussier wrote:
> Why would I want to NFS mount my /usr partition?
A cluster full of diskless workstations comes to mind...
I believe the Linux File System Standard actually specifies that /usr should
be mountable read-only to support just this sort of operation.
> RPM is designed with the misinformed notion that the user is installing to
> *their* desktop system, *NOT* a centralized NFS server.
I think that is going too far.
The default RPM database is for the local system, and assumes you are
installing to it.
But you can quite easily create additional RPM databases for separate
filesystem trees or whatever suits your application.
> If it were truly designed for centralized installation, then --prefix and
> --relocate would work on *every* pacakge. It doesn't, because RPM wasn't
> designed with the concept of an NFS server in mind.
The reason --prefix and --relocate don't work on every package is that most
packages have compiled-in defaults for the locations of their files. If you
move the locations of those files, the programs stop working. This isn't RPM,
it's 99% of the software packages out there. Open Source packages assume
you'll recompile if you want to change a path (that's efficient!). Closed
Source packages are just stupid.
Blaming RPM for this is an error.
> Yes, but how do I accomplish this if my NAS is exporting the path /nfs to
> the world and I want to install all "centrally admin'ed pkgs" down that
> path rather than /usr?
"rpm --root /nfs --dbpath /rpmdb/ --install package.rpm"
Paths are affected by the chroot(), so /rpmdb is really /nfs/rpmdb, for
example. If you also want to get rid of the /usr prefix, and the package
supports relocation, then use:
"rpm --root /nfs --dbpath /rpmdb/ --prefix=/ --install package.rpm"
If the package doesn't support relocation, either the packager was lazy, or
the package itself has compile-time paths set. Fix the appropriate problem.
> It won't work. RPM is not well designed with large scale networks in
> mind.
Please explain how the above won't work in a large environment.
--
Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Net Technologies, Inc. <http://www.ntisys.com>
Voice: (800)905-3049 x18 Fax: (978)499-7839
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