I have a dillemma here that I'd really like to resolve.
Here's the situation: I have my desktop and a server, both running Linux. The server speaks SMB via Samba to my Windows machines and NFS to my other UNIX-like boxen.
When I'm on a windows machine, I access my home directory off the server using Samba, but when I'm on my local desktop, I use my local filesystem. NFS mounting my homedir on my desktop from the fileserver is not feasable due to bandwidth concerns (only 100Mbit ethernet connects the two of us) and the fact that my PC is slightly mobile (I like to keep my data with me if I go to the trouble of moving my desktop).
What I'd like is a way to have my hoem directories be the same on both my Linux desktop and my server. That way, I can access my home directories from all my other systems off the server as normal, even if my Linux desktop is not on (which is occassional). Basically, I need a filesystem that will keep a local copy of the entire directory on both my desktop and my Linux server, while replicating immediately all changes made to it.
I'd really rather not run Samba on my desktop, and that would not really accomplish what I desire anyway as I want my network, including my hoemdir, to continue to function as normal even if my Linux desktop machine is not available.
I've thought of kludging off something like rsyncing between the two every minute or so, but that's a) a horrible, horrible kludge requiring something to be run every minute to sync up, and b) only provides per-minute consistency with considerable overhead. I'd like for local I/O to occur as fast as possible (limited only by local resources such as HDD) with full caching while updates to the filesystem proceed immediately as fast as the network can handle.
Does such a thing exist in the Linux world? Or for that matter, does such a thing exist?
--MonMotha
