Cross Post - Pooling

[kcossabo]

[]

I have a simple install

150G drive that I installed F14 on then Amahi

I seem to have built this way
/ = 50G
/home = 82G

I then added 3 drives, 500G, 1TB and 2TB, and did all the work to get them into a 'pool'

I see them in the Storage TAB, and I can now select 'Storage pool' when creating or editing a share.

When I create a Share it wants to put the path onto /var/hda/files/......

Shares that have pools indicated, show up in OSX as having free space equivalent to the size of the pool, Shares that do not use the pool, show as having size of the /home

QUESTION:
Does this mean that I am limited to the space available on the hda (/home) even though I have a pool? I assumed that the pool would put files where there was room, thus keeping the available space to the size of the pool (minus any file duplication).

[kcossabo]

I have found one of my issues. Putting files onto the share wrong.

[bigfoot65]

I would not have created such a large /home partition. I followed the wiki for install without LVM. If you want more room for /var/hda/files, recommend you allot more space to root. Don't need it in the /home part.

Also consider mounting a second drive as /var/hda/files. That's how my box is set up. The wiki has guidance on how to do that as well.

[Workdawg]

The "location" of the share is just the landing zone for the files (and the network location for mapping drives). Once you copy files there, they are moved off into your storage pool and a link is left in place.

[autumnwalker]

I would not have created such a large /home partition. I followed the wiki for install without LVM. If you want more room for /var/hda/files, recommend you allot more space to root. Don't need it in the /home part.

Also consider mounting a second drive as /var/hda/files. That's how my box is set up. The wiki has guidance on how to do that as well.

Is it worth doing a fresh install of Amahi without LVM and creating a 250ish GB root partition / "landing zone" for Grayhole? I don't really understand how GH works.

Could someone explain, at a high level, how GH works and the optimal way to set Amahi up to work with it?

[gboudreau]

See homepage of http://www.greyhole.net for some info on how Greyhole works.
Also: http://code.google.com/p/greyhole/wiki/HowGreyholeWorks

There is no need for LVM. If you can start over without that, you'll get back some free space.

Myself, I have:
20 GB / partition
(standard /boot and swap partitions)
rest of that drive: /var/hda/files/drives/drive1
All other disks: /var/hda/files/drives/drive2 to drive8

All my shares are located on the biggest of my drives (2TB):
/var/hda/files/drives/drive3/share_name

You should change your shares locations before you start copying data on them, to simplify things.

[autumnwalker]

Thanks very much Guillaume.

I have looked at both of those links before, but I am still a bit confused. I think I understand it at a high level, but the one thing I'm not clear about is whether or not GH will allow me to have shares that span drives. So if I have 4TB in my pool (2x2TB) and say I have 3TB of files in the share "Docs" which is on the first of the 2TB drives /var/hda/files/drives/drive1/docs. Will the first 2TB drive fill up and then start to spill over into the other 2TB drive or is the Docs share limited to 2TB and the other drive only used for duplication?

What I gather from your reply though is that you should have GH shares land on the largest drive in your pool - does it make sense to relocate /var/hda/files to your largest drive? Does it make sense to relocate it whenever you add a larger drive? Does it matter if shares land on different drives?

Although I am a bit confused, I am very impressed with this solution, keep up the great work!

[gboudreau]

The location of shares doesn't affect the space it has.

So /var/hda/files/drives/drive1/docs can contian 4TB of files. In fact, /var/hda/files/drives/drive1/docs will only contain symlinks to the real files, and thus will be very small. The files themselves will be in both drives you include in the pool.

Shares locations can be on different drives.
I suggest using the biggest drives not because this would define the space available on that share, but because the share location is used as temporary space, until Greyhole can move the files in the pooled drives.

Once you picked the initial location of your shares, you should not move them. It's possible to move them, but unnecessary, and opens the window for problems.