users as blobs

walt wa1ter at myrealbox.com
Sun Sep 3 15:16:56 PDT 2006


Bob Bagwill wrote:
> One feature I'd like, that might fit in with migrating junk around a
> cluster, is to have all the static data associated with a user in one
> blob that can be moved, archived, deleted, etc.  So rather than having
> /home/bob and /tmp/bob and /var/spool/mail/bob and /var/cron/crontabs/bob,
> you store everything under /home/bob, or have a bob filesystem layered
> on top of the shared one.

My gut instinct is that this is a great idea.  (My wife has considered
me a blob for years, and she's always right.)

My only hesitation concerns security and the size of my blob.  My
~/Mail directory can reach multi-megabytes in size, etc.

Are you thinking about, say, pointers to my real blob which exists
on one physical server, or actually migrating blob->walt to anywhere
I'm actually needed?  (Most likely to unplug the sink or the toilet.)

Are there any security implication here?  Again, my gut says Yes, but
I can't give you any reasons for why I feel that way.  Experts?





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