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Re: Am thinking of using subversion as a general purpose filing s ystem

From: Garrett Rooney <rooneg_at_electricjellyfish.net>
Date: 2004-04-02 20:40:15 CEST

andy.glew@amd.com wrote:
>>The filesystem is not the issue here; the files are. As long
>>as the BerkeleyDB files are only accessed by a local process, you are safe.
>>You cannot use a network map to access the BDB files safely. All other
>>accesses to the filesystem, whether via a map or local, are unimportant for
>>BDB purposes.
>
>
> How can you guarantee that the Berkeley DB files
> are accessed only by local processes?

By not doing that.

> For example, if you are running an indexing utility
> remotely, could that corrupt the files? My guess is no,
> since probably remote read-0only access is okay.
> But I'm not sure.

No, it isn't safe. All access to the database requires write access,
that's just an artifact of how berkeley db works. Even if your access
is 'read only' from Subversion's point of view, as far as berkeley db is
concerned it requires write access to the database files.

> Similarly, sometimes it's more convenient to run backup
> utilities remotely. Problematic? Probably cannot guarantee
> that the database snapshot is consistent - but then that
> is the usual problem with all databases, you can't use
> filesystem backups on thedm without quiescing the database
> processes that may have data in memory.
>
> Again, my guess is overall that remote read-only access
> is okay, although consistency cannot be guaranteed.

It doesn't matter if it would be 'more convenient' to run backup
utilites over a network drive connection, it's still not safe, so you
still risk corrupting your repository by doing so.

-garrett

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Received on Fri Apr 2 20:40:43 2004

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