Trevor Harrison's questions

I'm trying to tar up a directory that has about 3M tiny files in it. Tar is chugging along, but I'm thinking its going to take longer than I can wait.

I'm wondering if telling tar to not store metadata (owner, group, perms) would reduce the churn on reading and re-reading this huge directory and maybe speed things up, and if there is a tar switch that does this.

My initial perusal of the man page only gets me something like --no-xattrs, which looks like a start, but I was hoping someone had some specific knowledge.

I think I understand the way pre-NFS4 exports work, specifically the namespace of the exported point.

(ie. export /mnt/blah on server, use mount server:/mnt/blah /my/mnt/point on client)

However, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around NFS4 exports.

What I've been able to gather so far is that you export a 'root' by marking it with fsid=0, which you then import on the client side by referring to it as '/'.

(ie. exportfs -o fsid=0 /mnt/blah on server, mount server:/ on client)

However, after that, it gets a little weird. From my playing around, it seems I can't export anything else thats not under /mnt/blah. For example, exportfs /home/user1 fails when trying to mount from the client unless /mnt/blah/home/user1 exists on the server.

If this is the case, what is the difference between exportfs /mnt/blah/subdir1 on server and mount server:/subdir1 on client and just skipping the exportfs and mounting whatever subdir of /mnt/blah you want?

Why would you need to export anything other than the root? Its all in the same namespace anyway.

I need to add a 24 port switch to my wiring closet. In the (distant) past, I usually just punched each port of the switch to a 110 block on the wall (using hand-made cables), and cross connect between that and the 110 block that has the runs to each workstation.

To save time, I'm thinking of buying 12 pre-made drop cables, cutting them in half (so 24 single ended cables), and punching those to my 110 block.

The things I'm worried about are wire type (ie. solid vs. strands) and color scheme.

I really don't know if they use different wire types (still?), but I remember that being an issue at one point. Can anyone comment on this? (I definitely won't feel comfortable trying to punch stranded wiring on my 110 block)

Also, picking up a random pre-built cable I had laying around, I noticed that the color scheme used didn't appear to be T568B, but T568A, which would clash with the rest of my wall.

Anyone know of an online source that specifies these things?

I've looked at www.cablesforless.com (which does have nicer prices) and www.cablestogo.com (which seem stupid expensive) so far. Cables For Less doesn't specify wiring scheme, Cables To Go does specify T568B. Both seem to specify stranded wires instead of solid.

Update [a little @dennis inspired ascii art]:

switch ]---> 110 punch block <---> 110 punch block <----> wall plate ]---[ computer
|                                                 |      |
+-------------------------------------------------+  in  |
|        all mounted on wall in wiring closet     | wall |
+-------------------------------------------------+

I've got 2 sites with independent W2k3 servers. We've got about 10 users, a lot that work at both sites. Site1 has Exchange installed, IIS for OWA, a few shares, printer; site2 is just a simple server with a few shares and a printer. Site1 is called my_real_domain.local, and site2 is called other_city.my_real_domain.local. (even though they are subdomains, they are unrelated; sorry about the obfuscation)

I recently took over as admin, and I setup a site-to-site vpn (using bsd firewalls), and users can now login to the other site's servers across the vpn.

I want to simplify this setup so there is just 1 AD tree between the two sites. (we are running into password issues with some of the non-technical users and I want to reduce the number of passwords they have to manage)

I am not much of a MS guy... mostly app development, and a decade of Unix/Linux admining.

At one time, I fumbled around in the admin tools and tried to setup a domain trust, but I don't know how well that is working.

I'm guessing I could just uninstall / remove the AD tree (somehow) from site2's server and join it to the site1 domain over the vpn as a regular computer (repeat for each of the workstations at site2). The only issue with that is what happens if the vpn is down for a bit... I would like site2 users to still be able to login and access local resources. Is that a job for a backup/replicated AD? If so, is there a simple way of setting up site2's server to do that?

A related serverfault question: Active Directory Consolidation Strategy after Merger/Acquisition