On Thu, 2003-06-12 at 17:09, Jan Harkes wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 12, 2003 at 01:22:03PM +0200, Dick Kniep wrote:
> > So, to avoid these kind of problems, could I disconnect the servers and
> > regularly reconnect them to allow for the replication? (every hour or
> > so) or do I get into another mess? Result will off course be that I will
> > have some conflicts if people start working on a document on both sides,
> > but I think that is a lesser evil, and it will only occur seldom.
> 
> You'll be fixing up conflicts the rest of your life and hate me :(

I don't understand this. Certainly if we synchronize every 45 minutes,
it would be impossible for the users to work on both sides? So, synching
conflicts would occur only sporadic?

Furthermore, if the speed of connection is below 50 KB (which it most
certainly is!) then Coda switches to weak network connectivity, which
would effectively mean that the updates are done in the background? Or
am I missing something?

> 
> Best setup is to have 'independent' servers in each location. They can
> be in the same realm, but shouldn't share volumes, except the root
> volume that is modified as little as possible (by administrator only).
> 
> This way most people will have their files on their 'local' server but
> can still access files at the other location which are stored on the
> remote server.
> 
> i.e.
> 
>     /coda/myrealm/home/kniep  -> #A:h.kniep
>     /coda/myrealm/home/sjoerd -> #B:h.sjoerd
> 
> As far as users are concerned they don't even see the difference between
> files that are local or remote. Accessing a remote file will be a bit
> slower initially, but because Coda client agressively cache files, it
> won't hurt on further accesses until the file is updated. This will be
> faster and probably more reliable for the users as well.
> 
> Another way is to split things up in different realms. This way the
> location becomes an issue for the user, but it will avoid some
> unnecessary traffic between the two locations.
> 
> Other solutions you could look at (which don't use Coda) are mostly
> based around having all data at both locations and a cron job that runs
> once ever 15 minutes or half hour and synchronizes any new files,
> deletions or updates to the remote location.
> 
>  - unison, 2-way synchronization
>  - rsync,  1-way synchronization, but by knowing what the 'master site'
>    of a file or directory is you can push updates in both directions by
>    running it twice.

Yep we have currently running something like this, but it is not robust,
and we have lots of problems (including loosing files!!)

Cheers,
Dick