System Services Architecture
Dated: Thursday, 27-Jun-1996 12:22:40 EDT
This page describes the services offered by the Alachua Freenet computer
systems and how they are distributed. This information reflects the ideas
of the Chairman and is designed to promote discussion.
Services
- DNS
- NIS
- register
- Ph
- WWW
- FTP
- Annexen (erpcd)
- SMTP
- POP3/IMAP
- Interactive logins
- IRC daemon, bots
Organization
The general philosophy used in determining which services should go where
is maximizing performance and minimizing maintenance. Simplicity is a
goal as well. In particular:
- Don't mix interactive logins with servers.
- Keep servers and their data together.
These hueristics lead to the following groupings:
- freenet5, file server
-
This grouping assumes most (if not all) user home directories live on this
machine. WWW and FTP make heavy use of home directories.
- machine "X", mail server
-
This grouping keeps the mail spool local to the servers that use it. This
machine needs to be highly robust and thus cannot allow logins.
- freenet1 (?), name server
-
These services (except DNS) all make use of account information.
- freenet[23]
-
- Interactive logins
- IRC daemon
These machines support folks who cannot use SLIP/PPP. These machines
are relegated to processing keystrokes.
Most of these services could be relocated without much great hassle,
except for "machine X." Currently freenet3 handles email but also
allows interactive logins. Perhaps freenet4 can become the email server?
Moving mail services is a pain though; MX records need to be changed and
that requires waiting for DNS cache timeouts.