Brian's Stupid questions of the day

[Brian Densmore]

Tony,

  Thanks. I had downloaded both JFS and ReiserFS and haven't gotten around to
installing them on the Web-server. I will go with ReiserFS. Stability on that
box is absolutely essential, it will be a production box on the backbone (if I
ever get time to work on it!). 
Regarding the second question my hosts file looks like this

172.12.41.1		Gandalf.ClanMurray.org	Gandalf
172.12.41.2		Galadriel.ClanMurray.org Galadriel
...
172.12.41.129		www.amason.net
127.0.0.1		Gandalf.ClanMurray.org Gandalf localhost.localdomain localhost
and the resolv.conf file is

search ClanMurray.org
nameserver xxx.xxx.xxx.x
nameserver xxx.xxx.xxx.x
where th x's are my ISPs DNS boxes. I don't know what to make of that first
entry. I suppose my problem is due to using two network names. But, I want to
make this box look correct to start up. I don't want to have to reconfigure it
at the hosting site. Any pointers here, or good references to search?

Thanks for your help,
Brian

On Fri, 15 Sep 2000, Tony Hammitt wrote: > IBM's
JFS is just starting being ported, but they have actual IBM > engineering
support, so it may not take long.  ReiserFS has been being > ported for longer,
but they don't have any really huge companies > doing all of the engineering
work for them, so it's taking longer. >  > Technologically, JFS is a very
standard high-end UNIX journalling FS. > It journals not only metadata like
what files are being changed and > which directorys have updated but also
journals the data that is > being changed as well.  They use a separate
partition(s) for the > journals, which can be pretty arbitrarily sized. 
Usually you want > to have a mirror for the journal so if you lose your
journalling > partition's disk, you don't have to fsck.  Other than the journal,
> the JFS is extendable but not shrinkable, uses LVM tools to add
> space then automatically extends the file system in one step.
> 
> ReiserFS is a strange beastie that is based on a binary tree concept
> (like directories usually are) but extends the tree concept to how
> the data is stored as well.  Integrating this with the new unified
> buffer cache cleanly in the kernel is what's taking so long.  The
> main advantages here is the ease with which journalling of the
> structure can be accomplished and the speed of changing things in
> the filesystem.  As far as I know, once RFS is combined with LVM,
> we'll be able to grow and shrink filesystems easily.  But ReiserFS
> doesn't journal the actual file data, so you may lose data if the
> power goes off, you just won't lose any structure information.
> 
> All things considered, I think that there will be a place in the
> typical user's box for both JFS and ReiserFS.  JFS is slower but
> nearly bullet-proof.  Then there's XFS from SGI, which is another
> data-journalling FS and ext3 which is ext2 with a metadata journal
> file.  So we'll have lots of choices for which one we want to use
> soon, but not real soon.
> 
> SuSE and Mandrake ship ReiserFS-enabled kernels, but if you want to
> compile your own, you have to go get the patches.  None of the other
> experimental FS's are to that stage yet.  If you really need a
> journalling FS, your only real option is ReiserFS right now.  Kernel
> 2.5 should have it included along with most of the other ones, but
> it will be over a year before 2.5 is stable (educated guess).
> 
> Re the second part of the post, I'd check out what your default
> domain is, what your /etc/resolv.conf file says and what your routing
> table looks like.  Are these boxes hooked together using a hub or
> a switch?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Tony Hammitt
> 
> 
> P.S. Mike:  the default reply-to address isn't set to kclug at kclug.org
> 
> 
> 
> Brian Densmore wrote:
> > 
> > Does anybody know what the difference is between the Journaling File System
> > (jfs) and the Reiser File System; and which one I should use?
> > 
> > Also I have the following setup:
> >    1 pc which is acting as gateway and personal desktop - connected via 56k line
> >    2 pcs which are gateway clients
> >    1 pc which is a Web/e-mail/ftp server.
> > 
> > >From the webserver I can ping the gateway, but the gateway cannot ping the
> > webserver. The hosts entry for the webserver is like this
> > 
> > 172.200.20.129          www.amason.net
> > 
> > what is wrong with the entry?
> > 
> > should it be
> > 
> > 172.200.20.129          pc1.www.amason.net      www.amason.net
> > 
> > or what? Also, when I try to ping the other machine using the name or nickname
> > it goes out to the internet, and then fails to find them, but punching in the ip
> > address works fine!?
> > 
> > Thanks in advance,
> > Brian