SUMMARY: Aliasing Novell drive w/NCSA httpd under OSF/1 v3.2

From: Gordy Thompson <gordy_at_nytimes.com>
Date: Fri, 27 Sep 1996 18:37:44 -0400

        A very belated summary. I'd been holding off posting because we
haven't yet implemented our choice of solutions, but I want to get this out
because I'm going to have another question for the list soon and wanted to
square the balance sheet with everyone first [:-].

        The two solutions proposed were

        1) NFS-mounting the Novell drive on the Alpha so that (part of) its
file system appear in the webserver's directories.

        2) Using "samba" (ftp://nimbus.anu.edu.au/pub/tridge/samba) so the
Alpha could appear as a network drive to the clients and taking the Novell
drive out of the picture.

        We're already using NFS in some other applications (not involving
either the Novell drive or the Alpha), so there's less of a curve along
that route than samba, with which we're totally unfamiliar although it
looked intriguing at a quick glance.
        We were most encouraged by this recommendation from Martyn Brown
<brown_at_whio.lincoln.ac.nz>:

        "We have all our web pages on a Novell drive, but our server is a
unix machine - DECstation 5000 (will soon be Alpha).
        "We achieved this by purchasing NFS software for Novell, then
NFS-mounting the Novell drive on our DECstation.
        "We did it for exactly the same reasons you mention. It works well
for us."

        Thanks to all who replied: Jim D. Surlow
<jsurlow_at_hydra.acs.uci.edu>, Steve Gibbons <steve_at_wyrm.AZTech.Net>, Michael
A. Crowley <mcrowley_at_mhc.mtholyoke.edu>, John Hascall <john_at_iastate.edu>,
Rory O'Connor <rory_o'connor_at_us.wfl.com> and Martyn Brown
<brown_at_whio.lincoln.ac.nz>.

(original question follows:)

At 06:52 PM 8/23/96 -0400, Gordy Thompson <gordy_at_nytimes.com> wrote:
> We run our primary internal webserver (web.nytimes.com) on an Alpha
>3000/600 (OSF/1 v3.2, Rev. 214), and a second, experimental webserver on a
>Novell drive.
>
> The big advantage for the Novell server is that the web-page content
>providers can use conventional PC and Mac-based html editing applications
>and save them directly onto the Novell drive. (This is a =lot= easier than
>having them ftp their files onto the Alpha and get the file permissions
>straight.)
>
> Now, rather than have to teach our users to use two different
>webserver names, we want to make the html files on the Novell drive
>accessible using URLs constructed from the name of the primary webserver.
>
> Is there a way to either (a) mount the Novell drive onto the Alpha,
>so its html files would be included in the NCSA DocumentRoot, or (b) somehow
>"alias" the Novell httpd server from the Alpha's NCSA_httpd configuration,
>so that a URL like "http://web.nytimes.com/SomeDirectory/index.html" would
>redirect the client to retrieve the file from the other server?



==========================================================================
Gordon T. Thompson gordy_at_nytimes.com
Manager, Internet Services 212 556 1386
The New York Times fax: 212 556 1636
  The Times and I have an arrangement: Neither of us speaks for the other.
Received on Sat Sep 28 1996 - 00:52:48 NZST

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