[nflug] NFS noac option

[Justin Bennett]

I think you misunderstood the application.  I have a NFS machine that 
stores all our user data (home directories and other shares). This 
machine only stores the data. It exports the NFS shares using 
NIS/NFS/Automounter and these shares are automouted across multiple 
servers seamlessly, which use them like local file systems. These other 
servers then act as the IMAP and SAMBA servers to our clients, using the 
NFS mounted shares to be reexported to windows Pcs via samba, or email 
served via Courier-Imap and read from Imap clients on the desktops. The 
NFS only shares the data between two unix servers. There really is no 
other out of the box alternative for this I would never use CIFS for 
this. I like out of the box software, it keeps my maintenance down, I 
can use Redhat Network to update my servers, instead of compiling 
software all the time on multiple servers every time a patch or upgrade 
comes out, and having to worry about dependencies.

Having the Storage and Imap/Samba front ends separate allows me to keep 
my storage on one machine for ease of backup and recovery, while 
allowing multiple clients (when I say clients I mean linux/unix servers 
mounting it as a local file system) to access the same file systems . If 
my samba server is having issues, I copy the backed up smb.conf to 
another machine and away it goes serving up file to the windows machines 
from the automounts.

Maybe if your running hundreds of thousands of email accounts the NFS 
overhead would start to affect your performance over Imap, but for us 
running Courier Imap (with Maildir) It works great and (over 1GB 
Ethernet between the storage and imap server) and email is lightning 
quick for the ~250 users we have.


 From the Courier Imap README:

"Maildir"   is   a  directory-based  mail  storage  format  originally
   introduced  in  the  Qmail  mail server, and adopted as an alternative
   mail  storage format by both Exim and Postfix. Courier-IMAP is popular
   on  Qmail/Exim/Postfix  sites that are configured to use maildirs. The
   primary advantage of maildirs is that multiple applications can access
   the  same Maildir simultaneously without requiring any kind of locking
   whatsoever.  It  is  a faster and more efficient way to store mail. It
   works  particularly  well  over  NFS,  which  has  a  long  history of
   locking-related woes.

I didn't mean to start a flame war. :)

Justin



Justin Bennett
Network Administrator
Dynabrade, Inc.
8989 Sheridan Dr.
Clarence, NY 14031
 



Jesse Jarzynka wrote:
> Mark Musone wrote:
>> Oh. I guess I can directly give a quick answer with a question: what 
>> problem
>> are you trying to solve that requires the need for nfs mounted mail
>>   
>    I don't have any. I just don't understand why someone using NFS for 
> an unintended purpose makes NFS bad.
>
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