(Illustration by Gaich Muramatsu)
Hi Coda-ers ;) I'm new to Coda and to this mailing list so hi again. That said, I've looked at your project for long time, just couldn't find any to actually try and use it. Now I've recently deployed small installation in my home network and got some problems/questions I hope you can help me to solve. Mind you, I did RTFM (in fact, I did it long before I ever touched Coda itself). So If something is explained somewhere, just remind me where it is and I will find it. For reference, the server is based on Atom 1,6GHz with assigned 256MB of RAM, client is Athlon 2400+ with 1GB of RAM. There is root volume and there is /home/$user volume, and only the latter is used for data storage now. 1. What is practical maximum volume size, in terms of used space and number of files? 2. What is practical maximum file size to be pushed around? Use case: I have already learned that Coda isn't good choice for filer with size of hundred gigabytes. I have settled for my /home/$user. It's about 1,5GB and has about 30k files. Yet even with this amount of data venus tends to eat more than 80% CPU, clog the system and become totally unrensponsive. Restarting daemon helps for a while but the problem returns in few hours, even if Coda filesystem is not touched in the meanwhile (unless running vcodacon counts). 3. Is it possible to manually force volume hoarding and synchronisation? Preferred is some blocking operation, so that there is known exact moment when work is finished. Observing vcodacon helps of course but I found it a bit unreliable. 4. Is it possible to verify cache contents? That is, to determine whether given file/directory is viewed remotely or is taken from local cache? Use case: I mix laptop to the game. Despite issuing 'hoard add . 100:d+' at the top level of home volume (and keeping it connected for few hours), after taking laptop somewhere else I have discovered that the replica was incomplete. A bit annoying, considering that missing were the very files I intended to work on. What I miss is manual control over local cache, so I could force and verify synchronisation. Also, I haven't got success with opposite operation: purging cache (to save some filesystem space). 5. How can I instruct venus to forget realms? There are some leftovers from my earlier attempts. They are quite defunct now so there is no need to be reminded about them. >From here on there are no actual problems. More like random ideas. 6. Have you considered streaming? My current understanding is that if I want to access file it is wholly copied to the cache in the first place. Which is a bit troublesome when trying to access big files in this way. Movies for example. In which case it would be perfectly acceptable to start serving user partial file, before it's fully downloaded. 7. Is it possible to set per-volume quota? Like the hard limit on volume size? AFAIK there is only per-user quota which sometimes is not enough. 8. The user programs are confusing. Maybe it would be good idea to supply common frontend to them? Like VCS programs do. In general, I have mixed feelings. I really like Coda and despite problems I have, I'm very far from saying it sucks. It's really good piece of work which I'm sure I couldn't do better in reasonable time. Yet the problems are annoying and I can't even use alternative because there doesn't exist any! I haven't found another remote filesystem with persistent local cache, with the ability to work disconnected. So I just can't help quoting Duke Nuk'em: "this really pisses me off". :) Once again, please accept my appreciation of your good work and I hope it will get even better. Cheers, -- Grzegorz NowakowskiReceived on 2009-02-16 15:49:51