[OpenAFS-devel] Re: [OpenAFS] Soft mounts for /afs root
Sam Hartman
hartmans@mit.edu
13 Jun 2001 23:35:42 -0400
>>>>> "Derrick" == Derrick J Brashear <shadow@dementia.org> writes:
Derrick> On Wed, 13 Jun 2001, Jeff Riegel wrote:
>> We have been looking into modifying the AFS client to support
>> "soft mounts" for the AFS root directory. Currently, /afs is
>> mounted from your home cell's root.afs volume and provides
>> mount points to each cell's root.cell volume. The modification
>> would allow the client to see a virtual /afs with cell mount
>> points determined from a client-specific database or
>> configuration file. A mechanism could be provided to allow the
>> user to add a particular cell to his AFS root, similar to a Web
>> bookmark.
Derrick> Visiting upon this point, the ability of non-superusers
Derrick> to add cells to the fake root.afs should be
Derrick> configurable. Likewise, some balance between AFSDB and
Derrick> this would be nice, but I can't think how you'd so it,
Derrick> because AFSDB is basically the antithesis of a database
Derrick> of cells. But this is all detail that can be filled in
Derrick> later; The "hard" part of this work is getting the cache
Derrick> manager to do all the right things with the fakey
Derrick> root.afs in the first place.
I think what you want to happen is that if you try doing a lookup of
something under /afs it tries to do an AFSDB lookup and if that
succeeds, it adds the cell and the fake lookup result. You also want
a database of shortcuts to add, but for actual cells you can just use the same mechanism that AFSDB uses that searches both CellServDB and AFSDB.