[kdepim-users] Re: Akonadi + nfs home directories

[Martin (KDE)]

Am 31.03.2011 23:33, schrieb Ingo Klöcker:
> On Thursday 31 March 2011, Martin (KDE) wrote:
>> Am 31.03.2011 09:50, schrieb Lars Behrens:
>>> Am 29.03.2011 20:20, schrieb Martin (KDE):
>>>> huch, I never knew that there is a problem with akonadi and nfs. I
>>>> use nfs home drives since many years without major problems.
>>>
>>> You can use kdepim with the same account on different boxes? Even
>>> with the same user logged in on different boxes at the same time?
>>> I'd be interested in your setup then.
>>
>> No, not login from different boxes at the same time. This does not
>> make sense for me as a user can only sit in front of one computer.
>>
>>> We didn't get it to work here, tried (4 different users on 3 pcs, 2
>>> of them 64bit, 1 32bit, 3 of that existing ones, 1 a brandnew test
>>> account):
>>>
>>> * default setup with automatic migration from file based usage
>>> * switching off (or not using) akonadi in kaddressbook
>>> * using an external mysql server
>>
>> In general I have the fear that the latest development directions are
>> not realy enterprise safe. Many of these new things are fine for
>> single user computers, but if it comes to network centric stuff many
>> things fail (akonadi, digikam ...). To my opinion they chose the
>> wrong assumption that all files are on the local hard drive.
> 
> Your assumption about our assumption is wrong. For us enterprise means 
> IMAP, LDAP and/or a PIM server (Kolab, Exchange, etc.). IOW, nothing 
> (except for cached data) is local.

Sorry Ingo, you took me wrong. May be I was not clear in this: kdepim
takes the data from wherever I configure it to take the data from (map,
pop, ldap, and some more in the future like carddav or groupdav). My
point was that most programs assume that users home directory is local.
This includes akonadi and kde thumbnail cache for example. IMHO it does
not make any sense to store cache data (and the data can grow to several
hundreds of MBytes) in users home directory. I usually backup my users
home directory every day and as the database changes with every single
new data I have to either exclude it or clutter my backup.

> 
> 
>> Back to akonadi: If these data are pure caching data, this should
>> never go to home directory. The same is true for thumbnail cache.
>> These data are better placed in /var/tmp.
> 
> Yeah. Makes sense. So the problem is that we use /home (which is mounted 
> via nfs) instead of /var/tmp?

Yeah, this is the point. One suggestion was to store the cache data on
/tmp/kde-${USER} but the reply was that akonadi is not kde centric. So
may be it is time to think of a generic way. There still are some
folders in users home directory for configuration (like .kde, .config)
and others like .local. So add another one (lets say .cache), which
points to /var/tmp/cache-${USER}. And therein all programs can store
cache data. Even the digikam and web caches can go to this folder.

This has at least one drawback: If a user changes to another computer
the caches are not up to date (may be not existent at all). So for some
types of source (mbox files) some informations will be missing.

I don't know how long it will take to make a backup of these data. If it
does not take to long it can be integrated and akonadi will make a
backup every now and then (or at logout) so they can be imported (either
automatically or by hand) at next login.

I really like the kde pim suite and I hope all the best for the upcoming
new revision (I need GroupDAV support). It would be great if these
problems can be solved.

> 
> 
> Regards,
> Ingo
> 

Martin
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