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best way to mix workstation/server purpose



Hi,

I plan to migrate my netbsd/i386 (on amd64 cpu) workstation into a NetBSD/xen 
box.
I want to run both my workstation things (X, firefox, windowmaker, ...),
some NetBSD domU servers (to replace services - like bind9, openldap -
that bug with my netbsd/sparc64) and some Linux/FreeBSD/OpenSolaris domU just
to keep an eye on what's going on there.

My question is "how to deal with workstation/server mix" ?
I'm thinking of two scenari:
1. run NetBSD/xen as the workstation side and some domU for server side
and OS testings.
2. run NetBSD/xen as a "minimal" system and run everything else in
domUs.

About point 1:
- how much danger is this looking at server domU stability ? I've never
  seen my X hanging my workstation (only X in worse case) so I expect
  dom0 to be as stable. But doesn't this look like running OpenOffice on
  your firewall - dangerous and "better doing it another way" ;)

About point 2:
- if dom0 is NetBSD/xen (or Linux/xen), without X started, can I start X
  from a domU (via xm console I guess) ? Or do I need xdm on dom0
  connecting to X/XCDMP (or X/VNC) on any domU ?

Finally, applying to both cases, what's the best way to share disk space.
I have a 200Go IDE plugged in and would like /home to be shared between
every doms. I'm first thinking of NFS from dom0 to domU but I expect
poor perf. Can real dom0 partitions be mounted into domU (as long as
filesystem is compatible) ? I'm thinking of something like :
wd0a = NetBSD/i386 and NetBSD/xen (dom0)
wd0b = swap
wd0e = FFS with domU kernels and images
wd0f = FFS (or ext2) with /home
Quoting NetBSD/xen howto, it seems to make sense:
########################################################################
# VDEV doesn't really matter for a NetBSD guest OS, but it does for
# Linux.
# Worse, the device has to exists in /dev/ of domain0, because xm will
# try to stat() it. This means that in order to load a Linux guest OS
# from a NetBSD domain0, you'll have to create /dev/hda1, /dev/hda2, ...
# on domain0, with the major/minor from Linux :(
########################################################################
Is it the best way to share the disk ?

TIA,
        Jo
--
NetBSD brought my daemons to the Sun (c)

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