[GRASS5] grass database: where to put it]

[juhana nieminen]

We've found that placement of large GRASS databases works rather nicely
in most of the places that you've mentioned below. 

Helena Mitasova wrote:
> 
> /usr/local/share/grassdata <---doesn't seem too nice since /usr/local/ 'used for programs'
> /opt/grassdata
> /usr2/grassdata
> /data/grassdata	
> /home/paul/grassdata	<---works nicely in 'home' use or private databases

At the moment we have a small lab with 15 machines running GRASS and a
large amount of shared data (50+ Gig). As it was mentioned by Carl Worth
it would seem logical to locate the data in /var which is present in
most systems as default, making it an ideal place for storage of data.
I've notice that most systems seem to lack a separate partion for /var -
causing all of the material to fall in the / partition. But this
shouldn't be a problem if databases a created by sysadmins in partitions
with enough storage capacity.

However, if an NFS system is in use then I feel it is most approriate to
name a place for "data  storage" since it makes working with symbolic
links much easier when all machines in the network regard the shared
location in similar fashion. We for instance use the logic
/'machine'_nfs or /grass_data  -- where they have their own partitions
and even hard-disks. The simultaneous sharing of large amounts of data
seems to work rather nicely even with an old 10Tbase network structure.
Security issues are controlled by using a firewall between the lab and
the "outside" as well as through configuring appropriate group/user
privileges to the NFS users.


best regards,
-- 
-Juhana Nieminen, MSc.----------------------------------------------
Division of Environmental Biology,GIS Laboratory
P.O.Box 44 (Jyrangontie 2)                  tel: +358-9-191 50054
FIN-00014 University of Helsinki        fax: +358-9-191 50048
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