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You'll want to run Venti from raw disk partitions rather than files on a file system. If you want to mirror your partitions using several disks, read the last section of [setting up fossil] to see an example of how to use fs(3) to do that. Venti storage is divided into a log holding the data and an index mapping SHA1 hash to position in the log. The log is split into fixed-size (say, 500MB) chunks called arenas. There may be more than one file holding arenas for the Venti server. Their concatenation forms the actual log. The index is made up of individual index section files. You want about 5% as much index space as you have arena space. So if you have 100GB of arenas, plan on 5GB of index. Use disk/fdisk to create a Plan 9 partition on the disks you wish to use for Venti. Then use disk/prep to subdivide the Plan 9 partition into the arena files or index sections that Venti will use. The rest of this document assumes that you named the arena files /dev/sdC0/arenas{0,1} and that you named the index sections /dev/sdC0/isect{0,1}. Format the arenas with: ! venti/fmtarenas arenas0 /dev/sdC0/arenas0 ! venti/fmtarenas arenas1 /dev/sdC0/arenas1 Format the index sections with: ! venti/fmtisect isect0 /dev/sdC0/isect0 ! venti/fmtisect isect1 /dev/sdC0/isect1 Note that formatting the arenas and the index sections zeros the disk partitions, so it takes a long time. Create a venti.conf file containing: ! # the name of the index ! index main ! ! # the index sections ! isect /dev/sdC0/isect0 ! isect /dev/sdC0/isect1 ! ! # the arenas ! arenas /dev/sdC0/arenas0 ! arenas /dev/sdC0/arenas1 Format the index itself with: ! venti/fmtindex venti.conf Note that once you format the index you should not change the order of the index sections nor should you change the order of the arenas. It is safe to add new arenas. If you plan on booting the machine with venti/fossil as your root you should write the venti config into the arenas0 file: ! venti/conf -w /dev/sdC0/arenas0 < venti.conf Now the disks are ready. You can start the Venti server with ! venti/venti -w The file venti.conf must be in the current directory. Set the environment variable: venti=your-ip-address if required, you can put this in the startup scripts like /rc/bin/termrc. You can also add this line in plan9.ini Test the server with: ! vac -f /tmp/x.vac /adm ! vacfs /tmp/x.vac ! ls -l /n/vac Congratulations! You have a Venti. If you plan on booting with venti/fossil as your root you should add venti=/dev/sdC0/arenas0 in your plan9.ini. During boot the configuration file previously written to the start of this partition with the venti/conf program will be read back and used. See venti.conf(6), venti(8), and ventiaux(8) for more information. PERFORMANCE If you're worried about performance, start the subpartitions at sector offsets that are multiples of 16 so that 8k reads will be 8k-aligned on the disk. Or use type other in disk/fdisk for the partitions, but then you don't get such good partition names. Venti's performance is tied to the number of index sections. If you're going for high performance, get a handful of small disks to use for the index, so that many reads can happen in parallel. SECURITY By default Venti accepts connections from anyone, anywhere. If you are running in a hostile environment and don't want just anyone connecting to your Venti server, you can run it on the loopback device. Add loopbackmedium to your kernel (it's already in the pccpu and pcauth kernels) and then run ! ip/ipconfig loopback /dev/null 127.1 to set up a loopback IP address. (Note that the loopback medium is not compiled into the PC kernel by default). Then you can start Venti with ! venti/venti -a tcp!127.1!venti -h tcp!127.1!http -w and it will only take connections from 127.1. TEMPORARY FILES AND DIRECTORIES For some purposes it is desirable to exclude files or directories from being archived to venti. For example, if you want your $home/tmp excluded, set the 't' flag (temporary) for it (see chmod(1) for details): ! chmod +t $home/tmp After that, no files in tmp will be archived to venti. You can set the 't' flag for files, too LIVING WITH VENTI: VAC SCORES AND FLFMT The vac score given on the fossil console after an archival snapshot differs from the scores given by the vac command (on the console). Only the former contains /active, /snapshot and /archive. And only the former can therefore be used to do a flfmt -v <score> The vac command won't show up these root scores. But Russ Cox posted scripts to the 9fans mailinglist. One of them gets the most recent root score of a particular fossil and the other one prints the scores subsequent to it. You can find the scripts (and his explanation) on [http://lists.cse.psu.edu/archives/9fans/2003-March/023470.html]
