[OpenAFS] Z:\ is not in the global hierarchy

[Rodney M Dyer]

Jason & all,

After a fresh start this morning and reflecting on the information I gave 
you it occured to me that I have glossed over a simple fact.  On Windows 
there is in fact a "root".  It would be more precise to say there are many 
"roots".  Every device that sports a file system has a "root", they just 
show up as other drives.  However, for example, if there was only one drive 
in your system known as 'C:' then you would only have one "root", since you 
couldn't then change drives.  All your applications could then simply 
specify "\dir1\dir2\dir3\..." without actually specifying the drive, since 
the drive would always default to 'C:'.  In this case you would never have 
to use the drive designation in any of your path names.  Since NTFS 5 now 
supports device mounting under the C: drive, you could effectively "mount" 
all your devices under the "C:" root.

So we could in fact get AFS to be mounted under a root on Windows.  It 
would however require writing an installable file system (IFS) 
driver.  With a IFS OpenAFS Windows client you would simply use the 
"mountvol" command to mount AFS under "C:\afs", then all your apps would 
use "/afs/cell/dir/dir/...".  I believe however you would still have the 
slash direction problem with some Windows applications...annoying.  As long 
as you quote all your pathnames, Windows doesn't care about the 
forward/backslash issue.  Example...

      n:\ = our global AFS drive.

      c:\>dir "n:/uncc/coe/ntnet"

      This works just fine, and it may work for most apps, you just have to 
be especially careful.

In short, it could be done, but don't in any way hold your breath on this 
one.  Writing an IFS AFS client for Windows would be challenging, and 
expensive.  I've looked at the IFS kit myself.  It costs around 900 bucks 
just to get started, and I'm sure there are heavy licensing issues.

As Derrick would say if you want to contribute some code please feel free 
to do so. :)

Rodney