On Thu, 2012-08-09 at 14:55 +0100, Dave Howorth wrote:
Anton Aylward wrote:
We can clearly identify thing like /usr/share which seem to have been designed to be shared in this way. Logically at least even non-think machines can share that resource. Not sure what a 'non-think' machine is, but certainly machines with different hardware architectures can share those directories.
He means non-thin.
There may be development libraries which it is easier to keep updated at a single point: /usr/lib/ruby, or if you are obsessive many of the library directories under /usr/lib. IMHO, it is better to keep local copies of libraries, mainly for performance reasons. In the case of development libraries there are likely to be different versions in dev, test & production and careful and comprehensive version management should be in place.
+1, this shared /usr parts thing is ancient thinking. It never had anything to do with anything other than disks-are-expensive. They aren't anymore. Even when I managed thin clients I rolled an NFS root for each client. *MUCH* easier to manage. Then updates can be rolled out rather than slam-dunked [fun - break everyone at once!]. And the filesystem for thin clients these days will easily fit on a flash drive - local, faster, and less network dependent. Update schemes and package management is *FAR* superior to even 10 years ago and light years more advanced than what was available back in the disks-are-expensive days. Let the package management work, let volume management or sub-volume [butter style] management work for use. These are all around superior techniques.
There may also be shared resources like corporate cryptographic keys. And you want to trust those to NFS :) You're avvin a larf, aincha?
+1