On Tue, Sep 17 2013, Laurent Bercot <ska-supervision_at_skarnet.org> wrote:
>>         A  FIFO  special file (a named pipe) is similar to a pipe, except
>>         that it is accessed as part of the file system.  It can be opened
>>         by multiple processes for reading or writing.  When processes are
>>         exchanging data via the FIFO, the kernel passes all  data  inter‐
>>         nally without writing it to the file system.  Thus, the FIFO spe‐
>>         cial file has no contents on the file  system;  the  file  system
>>         entry  merely  serves  as a reference point so that processes can
>>         access the pipe using a name in the file system.
>
>   That means you aren't storing any data into the filesystem. The metadata,
> however, still needs to be accessed. When you're resolving
> /mnt/nfs/fifo, you're still performing a NFS query, and if the NFS server
> happens to be down at that moment, whoopsie-boopsie.
>   Once your file descriptors are open, though, you're probably safe.
Thanks, Laurent.  This is the kind of consideration I was looking for.
On Tue, Sep 17 2013, Laurent Bercot <ska-supervision_at_skarnet.org> wrote:
>   Original daemontools, runit and s6 all work on read-only
> filesystems: you just have to have a "supervise" symlink
> (and also an "event" symlink in the case of s6-supervise) pointing
> to a writable filesystem. This symlink can even be dangling at
> boot time, for instance pointing to a RAM filesystem that is only
> created during initialization.
But upon further consideration, making the supervise directories
symlinks to a tmpfs, as you suggest here, will work for my needs and
will probably end up being more robust.
Thanks for all the suggestions.
jamie.
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Received on Wed Sep 18 2013 - 02:43:04 UTC