[Rpm-maint] RPM database on NFS root

[Mark Hatle]

Jeremy Sanders wrote:
> Are there any plans to be able to host an RPM database over NFS? See 
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=141614

In my experience (due to NFS locking), it's not possible to do an RPM
database over NFS.  However you do have some options.

> For our manchines which use remote root over nfs, we use an ext3 filesystem
> mounted over gnbd network block devices to place the rpm database, which
> appears to work (except gnbd is missing from Fedora...) It would be nice
> not to have to do this.

You can either use sqlite (which is probably a bit slower, and I'm not
sure if it's still available in the rpm-maint 4.4.2.X branch.  It _WAS_
in stock 4.4.2 and the rpm5.org's tree.)  If you go down the route of
the sqlite database, it's still only key/value pair driven, and is much
slower the the berkleyDB interface.  You may also STILL encounter
locking issues w/ sqlite (but in practice I never encountered them...)

Or you can use RPC for the berkley DB interface.  I don't have details
on this, but this will use a more reliable network interface to go back
to the host for the RPM database access.  This is probably be more
reliable then sqlite.

> If rpm could use a sqlite database instead of BDB, this should allow it to
> work over NFS. Are there any plans to support sqlite?

It can (or could).  sqlite has/had been part of rpm 4.4.2 for a while.
It was created specifically to work around these locking issues when the
RPC interface was not possible.

--Mark

> Thanks
> 
> Jeremy
>