Ask Slashdot: Best *nix Distro For a Dynamic File Server? 234
An anonymous reader (citing "silly workplace security policies") writes "I'm in charge of developing for my workplace a particular sort of 'dynamic' file server for handling scientific data. We have all the hardware in place, but can't figure out what *nix distro would work best. Can the great minds at Slashdot pool their resources and divine an answer? Some background: We have sensor units scattered across a couple square miles of undeveloped land, which each collect ~500 gigs of data per 24h. When these drives come back from the field each day, they'll be plugged into a server featuring a dozen removable drive sleds. We need to present the contents of these drives as one unified tree (shared out via Samba), and the best way to go about that appears to be a unioning file system. There's also requirement that the server has to boot in 30 seconds or less off a mechanical hard drive. We've been looking around, but are having trouble finding info for this seemingly simple situation. Can we get FreeNAS to do this? Do we try Greyhole? Is there a distro that can run unionfs/aufs/mhddfs out-of-the-box without messing with manual recompiling? Why is documentation for *nix always so bad?""
Re:Mechanical Hard Drive (Score:4, Funny)
They already bought a $20 5400rpm 80Gb drive and don't want it to be wasted.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)
I worked with networked computers in professional capacity longer than all of you combined, and I completely agree with the person you are replying to.
You are absolutely definitely unqualified to make any design decisions about the project you have described. The design is stupid, requirements are idiotic, and if iot was implemented in such manner it would not work for many reasons that you don't seem to be capable of understanding.
On top of that massive ignorance, you are stupid.