[HCoop-Discuss] Filesystem poll results

[Brian Templeton]

Adam Chlipala <adamc at hcoop.net> writes:

> You can find the current results of the filesystem poll here:
>     https://members.hcoop.net/portal/poll?id=21
>
> As of the time I'm writing this, 42 out of 137 members have voted.  They 
> chose as follows:
>
> 20: A local filesystem
> 13: A networked/distributed filesystem
> 9: No opinion
>
> To me, "no opinion" should be interpreted to mean that these members 
> would only want/benefit from a networked filesystem that improved some 
> aspect of our infrastructure that isn't directly visible to members.  
> Probably people who skipped voting are disproportionately unlikely to 
> have explicit preferences for any features beyond the bare-bones UNIX stuff.

This is nonsensical. You might as well interpret it to mean that they're
happy enough with the status quo and that they'd prefer keeping AFS to
putting up with the service interruptions and extra work that would be
required to transition back to non-networked filesystems.

> We have more than twice as many votes stating disinterest in networked 
> FS features as votes expressing interest.

Well, the people who didn't vote presumably don't care very much, so I
conclude that only 15% of our membership has any interest in
transitioning from networked to local filesystems. Clearly a landslide
victory for the AFS faction! :)

> This makes it sound to me like it makes sense to do local filesystem
> accounts by default and plan to eventually support (maybe multiple)
> networked filesystems as optional add-ons that our "production"
> infrastructure ignores.
>
> Does anyone disagree with this conclusion?

I do. AFS is already an important part of our infrastructure; we could
at least try to move to something closer to a recommended setup
(dedicated AFS server, SQL databases not in AFS space, etc.) before
sinking a lot of effort into transitioning back to local filesystems.
And it doesn't help that we're apparently not communicating well with
our few members who are AFS experts -- not sending mod_waklog bug
reports to megacz, for example.

-- 
Inteligenta persono lernas la lingvon Esperanton rapide kaj facile.
Esperanto estas moderna, kultura lingvo por la mondo. Simpla, fleksebla,
belsona, Esperanto estas la praktika solvo de la problemo de universala
interkompreno. Lernu la interlingvon Esperanton! http://lernu.net/