[PLUG] Bpbatch

[Michael C. Robinson]

I'm looking into using filecache reading about bpbatch.  Apparently it
is an optional way to use a hard drive to improve performance though I
would think I could just use a ramdisk instead.  Isn't there cache NFS
or something similar which clevery uses an area in memory to store files
needing frequent access from a server?  Course it's best to
only cache read only files in ramdisk since you want to be able to turn
the computer off without doing a proper shutdown to avoid data loss.  I
don't think I need a cached network filesystem just to achieve dumping 
and restoring partitions though as slow operation probably won't be too
much of an issue.

Is this program updated for Redhat 7.2/7.3?  

Has anyone accessed a local hard disk on a machine booted with LTSP?
I wonder why in a default install of LTSP that you can't access the
drive(s)?  There's something about accessing a local floppy drive
but that looks like a major kludge.  Knoppix gives you local parition
access, unfortunately you have to have a cdrom drive that can boot.

Does the root partition have to be in ram or on the local drive for me
to be able to manipulate the local drive?  I guess no if sun used to put
the swap partition on the local hard disk and have root somewhere else.
I want to do something very similar except the local disk is not a
temporary space, it's what I need to do backup and restoration
operations on.

I've made Tom's root boot network boot by simply tagging a disk image
copy of the Tom's kernel and initrd image if I remember right.  Are
there any Linux distributions that are specifically written to be
installed on a host server for boot by network clients?  I guess the
issues that you have to look at closely is how to deal with temporary
and log files when setting something like this up.  I think the only
problems with using Tom's are twofold:  The backup/restore utilities
don't work as expected,  there's no modern filesystem support for ext3
and journaling.  Maybe I could get away with using a newer Tom's with
ext3 support if it can mount an nfs drive that has the normal tar, etc.
utilities.

     --  Michael C. Robinson