Re: [PATCH/RFC 0/7] Volatile Filehandle Client-side Support

[Malahal Naineni <malahal@us.ibm.com>]

J. Bruce Fields [bfields@fieldses.org] wrote:
> > Only answers can be dumb! Bruce, we have ext3/ext4 file systems on two
> > separate servers. The file systems are mirrored using rsync as and when
> > needed. We would like to use the servers as replicas.
> 
> And why aren't you rsync'ing the underlying filesystem image instead?
> Is that too slow?

The file system image is too big to do entire image level rsync'ing.

> > Since the file systems are mirrored using "rsync", the NFS file handles
> > each server exports would be different. We would like to use volatile
> > file handles feature of NFSv4 for this.
> 
> In theory the hidden directory for reverse lookups would work, but it
> seems like it would be complicated to get right:
> 	- How do you generate the directory and keep it up to date?
> 	- What happens if somebody breaks the rules and updates the
> 	  filesystem while it's being exported?

I think so too. We think Volatile file handle support on the client side
is simpler for our use case (read only NFS file systems)

Regards, Malahal.