[OpenAFS] OpenAFS on MacOS X

[Patrick J. LoPresti]

Derek Atkins <warlord@MIT.EDU> writes:

> When you stat the mountpoint you attempt to contact the fileserver
> with the mounted volume.  This is why 'ls -l /afs' takes so long,
> because as you stat() each mountpoint, you have to go off and contact
> each cell.

Ah, right (duh).  What I meant to ask was whether the communication
was with the file server or with some other replicated server (e.g.,
the VLDB).  Either way would give you problems in the top-level /afs,
but at least within a cell, the VLDB should always be available even
when particular file servers are not.

I am concerned about the case where one of our file servers is
unavailable and someone tries to browse, say, /afs/curl.com/users.
Just how bad is the timeout, anyway?

Having an option to make stat() on mountpoints not chase them would be
handy; you could solve this problem with replicated RO volumes.

 - Pat