[Tyler McAdams]

Is it possible (I've never used OS X server) to install and partition LVM style with OS X?

[utidjian]

Originally posted by Tyler McAdams:
Is it possible (I've never used OS X server) to install and partition LVM style with OS X?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Sort of... see: http://www.vinumvm.org/

I have not been able to find a working implementation for Mac OS X (let alone FreeBSD). Seems the sourceforge page has not released any files yet (shrug).

Not sure how an HFS+ filesystem would map on to vinum even if it is at all possible. It would probably have to be a UFS type filesystem.

Personally and at work, I use LVM on a Linux server and export via NFS to the Mac OS X clients. This works well for us. It was a bit of a struggle getting NFS client in Panther to work well with my NFS servers. It worked fine in Jaguar. Apple "inherited" the NFS code from FreeBSD which until last year had no NFS file locking. Then when they implemented NFS file locking they did it in such a way that it was incompatible with anything but a FreeBSD/Mac OS X NFS file server. So one has to set 'NFSLOCKING=-NO-' in /etc/hostconfig on the clients for it to work. This situation may have changed since then.

[Tyler McAdams]

NFS sucks! Why use it at all if you are using OS X and Linux is your fileserver? You could use samba or even better still Netatalk!

[utidjian]

Originally posted by Tyler McAdams:
NFS sucks! Why use it at all if you are using OS X and Linux is your fileserver? You could use samba or even better still Netatalk!

How would I map multiple new user accounts across dozens of clients for Samba and Netatalk? I can do this easily with NFS/NIS.

How would I create new automount points and "push" them to the clients using Samba or Netatalk?

Downside of Netatalk is that it sometimes mangles permissions.

I would prefer to use OpenAFS/LDAP/Kerberos on all servers and clients but I have not yet worked that scheme out yet.

BTW I use Samba for the Windows clients and Netatalk for the Mac OS 9 clients (that still exist). These work fine but the performance and ease of setup and maintenance of NFS far outstrips Samba and Netatalk on my network. YMMV.

[Tyler McAdams]

Originally posted by utidjian:
How would I map multiple new user accounts across dozens of clients for Samba and Netatalk? I can do this easily with NFS/NIS.

You could do that with samba, technically. There are probably some third party addons for Appletalk you could do that with. If possible I'd use them bf samba. I hate samba and NFS.

[utidjian]

Originally posted by Tyler McAdams:
You could do that with samba, technically. There are probably some third party addons for Appletalk you could do that with. If possible I'd use them bf samba. I hate samba and NFS.

Sure... "technically" you can do what ever you want. The devil is in the details.

It is not uncommon to inherit the admin of a system that one didn't set up to begin with (as did I). Sometimes the original builders did not or could not set it up any differently with the same functionality. When I get the time I will migrate everything to OpenAFS/LDAP... until then what I have works and works well.

[Tyler McAdams]

Apple has got to be working on LVM for at least the server side. I would hate to think that it has not been played with... if at least something on the closed source side.