Installing and using InterMezzo requires at least two computers running Linux, one to act as an InterMezzo file server, and at least one to act as a client of that server. For optimal experimentation with InterMezzo, you should have a un-used partition on the server and on each client, which will serve as the main InterMezzo filesystem and the client's local cache, respectively. Since few of the laptops that I've ever used have had spare filesystems sitting around, the instructions in the next few sections also explain how to use a loopback filesystem as a client cache when experimenting with InterMezzo, but an actual filesystem is much more robust and therefore preferable.

Installing and using InterMezzo and related software packages requires the following:

• InterMezzo support in the kernel. The next section of this article provides instructions for determining whether this support is already present on your system. It also explains how to build the InterMezzo kernel module if it is not already available and your kernel doesn't contain built-in InterMezzo support.
• ghttpd: ghttpd is a fast and efficient HTTP server with the CGI support required by InterMezzo. If you are using a Linux distribution that supports RPM packages, you can download an appropriate version of ghttpd from ftp://ftp.inter-mezzo.org/pub/intermezzo/old/libghttp-1.0.9-1.i386.rpm. Otherwise, you can download the source code from ftp://ftp.inter-mezzo.org/pub/intermezzo/old/libghttp-1.0.9.tar.gz,
• InterSync: As discussed earlier, InterSync is the synchronization process used by InterMezzo clients and servers. If you are using a Linux distribution that supports RPM packages, you can download an appropriate InterSync RPM from ftp://ftp.inter-mezzo.org/pub/intermezzo/intersync-0.9.4-1.i386.rpm. Otherwise, you can download the source code from ftp://ftp.inter-mezzo.org/pub/intermezzo/intersync-0.9.4.tar.gz.

InterSync depends on the glib2 package, and also requires headers provided with ghttpd. If you have to build InterSync, you should build and install ghttpd first so that InterSync can find the mandatory header files. If you are building InterSync, a directory or symbolic link named /usr/src/linux must exist that points to or contains the kernel source code on your system. InterSync also requires header files from your Linux kernel distribution.

Next: Kernel Configuration »