Why are the Greyhole drives mounted in the LZ by default?

[hhearst]

Hi Folks. First Post.

Just got my Amahi system up and running (and all seems well), but I have not setup Greyhole yet. I currently have a 40GB drive as my system drives with all the typical partitions, a 700 GB drive mounted at /var/hda/files as the landing zone and two 3TB drives that I will use for my storage pool mounted at /var/hda/files/drives/drive01 (and 02 respectively). This seems to be the way the examples are setup.

So, is it me or does it seem weird that we are mounting the pool drives in the Landing Zone? I guess Greypool is smart enough to figure this out and deal with it, but ... well.. it seems weird in a recursive kind of way, I guess. I have noticed that there is an empty folder at /var/hda/drives. What is the purpose of this folder? Would it make more sense to mount my storage pool drives there?

Is there some fundamental concept I am missing or am I being anal. Or both... What is the best practice here?

Thanks
-Hal

P.S. Sorry, if this is covered elsewhere. Also, originally posted this accidentally in the File Sharing forum. oops... I delete that one.

[bigfoot65]

Some folks would only have one drive for Greyhole, so where else could the LZ be? What you are doing is common practice.

If you want more info, recommend you peruse the wiki and here. There is a lot of guidance spread throughout both.

[hhearst]

Thanks BigFoot. I very much appreciate the response.

I have used the wiki, this forum and google. Many hours in fact over several days. And, I am going to use them a lot more.

Anyway, I don't really understand your response. The questions is not "Where should the LZ be mounted?", but "Where should the Storage Pool Drives be mounted?". This is Linux, so they can be mounted anywhere. So, even if you have only 1 additional drive for the Greyhole pool, why would you mount it in the area in which "stuff" is supposed to be copied out of and to other locations (and then replaced with Symlinks)?

It is also "What is the purpose of the "drives" directory that the Amahi installer creates by default, but does not seem to be used for anything. That seems like a good place to hold the mount point for my greyhole pool drives and not a "drives" folder in the "files" directory (which is the LZ).

I guess the real answer is... it does not matter. Samba will only show the proper shares (and not the drives folder) and because Samba knows, Greyhole knows. Get your config right and all is well. If you want to be particular, feel free.

Anyway, I think I will mount my pool drive in the (apparently) unused /var/hda/drives directory and keep consistency on the file system between the /var/hda/files directory and my samba shares. Why? In the words of Bluto Blutarsky, "[belches] Why not?"

Regards
-Hal

[bigfoot65]

Sorry, guess I misunderstood. The drives directory in /var/hda/files is where the hda-diskmount script mounts the drives. Most users put their storage pool drives there as well. It's only a mount point, so does not really take up any space. Greyhole and Samba does not see the folder either as you said, so it's not touched. Really putting too much thought into this one LOL

As for the drives directory in /var/hda, that is new to Amahi 7. Not sure if that was intended to be the new place for storage pool drives to be mounted or maybe a placeholder for the future disk wizard plug-in that is still on the drawing board.

Either way, you can mount your drives pretty much anywhere you want as you mentioned. Basic users just follow the /var/hda/files/drives path as guided by the wiki. More advanced users may not.

I personally don't think ti matters. I used /var/hda/files for mine, but did not notice the /var/hda/drives folder until after I had set things up. I will have to ask our fearless leader about the intent of the folder.

[hhearst]

Thanks much. I guess I have now changed my mind and I will keep the drives in the files directory, now that I understand it. Thanks again.

-Hal

[bigfoot65]

No problem. We all have our own opinions on where to mount things It's typically a matter of personal preference.