On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 05:22:15PM -0400, Joseph Bishay wrote: > We are in the process of building a new school, just down the street > from our existing building, and I am looking for a way to allow > seamless LTSP access between the two buildings. Ideally, someone > would be able to log out at one location, walk/drive to the other > building, and log back in and continue with full access to all their > files. > > Unfortunately I cannot physically connect the networks of the two > buildings -- there are other public / private properties between the > two structures. > > I am wondering if the solution might be as simple as having two LTSP > servers at both locations, and rsyncing /home between the two of them > through the Internet? > > Does anyone have an experience with respect to such a situation?
We have two Honda dealerships, and whilst our staff do not switch between sites very often, we do like to have synchronised shared data. Rsync is generally one-way, which isn't ideal for two-way file synchronisation, although I suppose if you work on the basis that each user can only be at one location at a time, it could work. Alternatively Unison uses rsync for two-way synchronisation. We started out using Unison using /srv/shared on each LTSP server. This proved to be a bad idea, as Unison uses a lot of resources during the synchronisation process. It did a good job though of keeping the files in sync though. If you opted to use Unison then I would recommend separating the data and unison process from the LTSP server, so that the load does not impact on your users. Keeping data off the LTSP server is probably good practice anyway. We then moved to using a central web-based Apache Webdav/SVN repository, which works okay, except that saving files requires decent upload bandwidth, not generally available with ADSL, and we are encountering locking issues with davfs2. All-in-all our experience is probably best used as an example of what not to do! That said, whilst your case sounds more difficult - sharing home folders - in practice it is probably easier, as you should never have both copies being edited at the same time. Perhaps an rsync prompted by the user's logout? But it mostly comes down to bandwidth - if you have decent synchronous bandwidth between the sites, then you have options. -- Chris Roberts http://chrisjrob.wordpress.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Enable your software for Intel(R) Active Management Technology to meet the growing manageability and security demands of your customers. Businesses are taking advantage of Intel(R) vPro (TM) technology - will your software be a part of the solution? Download the Intel(R) Manageability Checker today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devmar _____________________________________________________________________ Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.freenode.net
