Diskless Servers

[Tabor Kelly]

Evan Sayer wrote:
> Hello-
> Is it a good idea to run a mail server or web server diskless?  The 
> reason I want to do this is so that all of our server's files will be in 
> one place which will make backups more convenient.  Basically I am 
> thinking of running one NFS/TFTP file server with disks, and those disks 
> will contain the partitions for a web server, a mail server, and a login 
> server which will all boot diskless.  Is this safe and ok performance 
> wise?  Thanks.

So, mbox format mail files can not be run over NFS because NFS does not 
implement posix standard file locking. You could run courier or qmail 
with maildir however. I use a patched version of qmail (and I love it), 
your can read about my experiences here (please note, I haven't quite 
finished this document yet and it is still a little rough around the 
edges): (http://tabor.taborandtashell.net/serversetup/qmail.html).

As for a web server, I don't know of any file locking problems, although 
for some specific implementations I would presume that they would pop up 
(ex: anything to do with a Berkley DB).

So, in short the answer to your question is: depends.

Note: I am not an expert unix system administrator, nor have I ever had 
a disk less server, I have however been monkeying with unix for about 8 
years now.