distfiles tip for HD challenged, but BW blessed.

gibson3659 · n00b Joined: 06 Feb 2003 Posts: 22

I haven't tried this, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work. Please forgive if this has been posted before.

emerge lufs
use lufs to mount distfiles at a mirror

should save all that space used for local copies of the dist files.
It would probably be nicer to write a short script that would mount a mirror, emerge, and unmount.

puddpunk · l33t Joined: 20 Jul 2002 Posts: 681 Location: New Zealand

I think the problem is the fact that the gentoo servers are bandwidth challanged. I wonder how much extra traffic that program generates? Gentoo Linux is a growing distro and the strain on the mirrors is growing.

But apart from that, nice idea

gibson3659 · n00b Joined: 06 Feb 2003 Posts: 22

My main concern is that without support for it in portage/emerge, you would probably stay logged in until the emerge completed. I don't know the details of lufs, so I don't know if it stays connected the entire time it is mounted or if it times-out and reconnects when a request is made.

smokeslikeapoet · Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2003 11:13 pm Post subject:

I would only use this script if I was not the kind of person that didn't recompile stuff often. If you are happy with your system and only upgrade stuff every few months, then i don't see any problem with it.

The best use for this utility would be if you ran your own mirror on a network and didn't want to store all of the source packages on each local client.
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Squinky86 · Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2003 3:20 am Post subject:

I would recommend against this if you do any non-standard emerges or use any development packages.
What happens when you try to download a file from a mirror that isn't there? It will fail to the next mirror and download the file and it MIGHT error (speculation) when it tries to write it to the mounted lufs directory.
I've used lufs before and it is an amazing package that isn't much of a bandwidth hog, so there's little or no problem there. I only see user problems occuring here for custom systems.
If you do use only a few basic stable packages, it seems like this would work though; it really depends on the user.
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jago25_98 · Apprentice Joined: 23 Aug 2002 Posts: 180

suggest update original post to include:

"size of the cache can also be limited in /etc/make.conf with CCACHE_SIZE"

with thanks

Squinky86 · Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2003 12:55 am Post subject:

Another thing to remember. What would happen if a bunch of people used this on an ftp server? lufs logs in to the server when it mounts and relogs in when called upon if the connection times out. This could cause those already busy ftp servers to stay full.
BTW, isn't ccache used in compiling, like it remembers what certain peices of code return and make compiling faster? I didn't think it had anything to do with portage/distfiles and I thought you had to have ccache installed and listed in FEATURES in make.conf. I haven't looked into it, so I could be wrong, but it looks like it would only take up more hd space for the space-challenged. Be sure to flog me if I'm wrong; I'm still learning this kind of stuff.
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