28 Jan 2003 (updated 16 Nov 2007 at 15:46 UTC)
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There's a few projects that I would like to work on this
week. I'd like to get an updated version of SeminarSite out
before next month. A lot of people have made certain
requests and I'd like to implement all of them and release
the product. People can download the CVS version if they
wish, I suppose.
Here at the School of Computer Science, we have a neat
little system called the 'Depot'. The Depot comprises of
various mounted drives on a multitude of servers and
architectures. Each directory in the Depot is a symbolic
link pointing to compilied binares on an unmounted disk.
When a user requests this particular directory, the drive is
automounted and the binaries for the specific architecture
is retireved. The depot automatically mounts the
appropriate software package in acordance to the
architecture of the machine. This saves lots of time for
the lazy system administrator. We don't have to install
non-standard packages of software on every workstation and
we can make updates from a single host.
The documentation for the depot system is in a state of
disarray. I have been assigned to the task of sorting it
out last year, but it has fallen downhill since then. I
made a generic information file to be customized and
inserted in each directory. A nightly script mounts each
directory and retrieves the information and consolidates it
into a single file. (I probably should use XML someday.) A
couple PHP scripts interprets this data into easily
navigatable web pages. I call it "DepotDoc".
Oh well, off to work I go!