[OpenAFS] Mount points for .backup volumes

[Charles Karney]

One of the "cool" features for AFS is the ability of users to access
.backup volumes and so to restore accidentally deleted files without
operator intervention.

Knowing that most users will not know how to issue a "fs mkm" command, I've
made the mount points for them and the question arises as to the best
location for these mount points.

The convention that I've adopted is to place the .backup mount point at the
top level of the volume is question.  Thus

    fs ls ckarney{,/.backup}
    'ckarney' is a mount point for volume '#user.ckarney'
    'ckarney/.backup' is a mount point for volume '#user.ckarney.backup'

While this is an intuitive place for the mount point, it suffers from the
problem that there's now a loop in the file system.  This is exhibited by
messages like

    find: ./.backup/.backup: No such file or directory

On the windows client, a colleague was also faced with a directory listing
along the lines of

    \.backup\.backup\.backup\.backup\.backup\.backup\.backup\.backup\...

A possible alternative strategy would be to locate the mount points in a
sibling directory, thus

    'ckarney' is a mount point for volume '#user.ckarney'
    '.backup/ckarney' is a mount point for volume '#user.ckarney.backup'

What are other peoples experiences/recommendations?

-- 
Charles Karney			Email:	ckarney@sarnoff.com
Sarnoff Corporation		Phone:	+1 609 734 2312
Princeton, NJ 08543-5300	Fax:	+1 609 734 2586