[OpenAFS] Questions, vol. 2.

Stephen Bosch posting@vodacomm.ca
Wed, 21 Jan 2004 10:41:30 -0700


More questions!

-Volumes and volume sizes -- what do you use as a typical volume 
size/quota? The default is 5 Mb, which is ridiculously small (and points 
toward an assumption that AFS will be used largely for user home 
directories). What is too big? For example, I have just created a volume 
with a 4 Gb quota, as that will comfortably fit on a DVD-R.

-Volume granularity -- at a minimum, a volume must correspond to one 
directory, correct? In other words, I can't concatenate volumes invisibly.

-Another partition question -- on a /vicepxx partition, where does the 
data actually reside?

-Unix/AFS user account synchronization: We have two existing 
workstations that are heavily used. These workstations will also use 
AFS, but we don't want to move their local home directories to the AFS 
cell. Do we have to? All the docs seemed geared to that, but all we want 
is an AFS cell where we can save critical data and then replicate it or 
back it up.

The docs leave me with the understanding that a client workstation will 
treat the mounted AFS filespace the same as a mounted local disk. That 
is, a file owned by user ID 501 in AFS will appear the same as a file on 
  a local disk owned by user ID 501.

If I want to create a new user in the cell, does this mean that I have to

first create a user in AFS
create a user on the user's workstation with the same UID/GID as the new 
AFS user?

-Group IDs -- AFS uses negative group ID numbers. The Linux machines 
have no idea what to do with that -- they just read the group ID's as "0"

-afs-modified login, etc. The documentation recommends using the afs 
modified login. In our case, that essentially means using pam for afs 
authentication, but as one poster has just pointed out, some 
applications like openssh don't always function properly with the afs 
pam module. What do you use in your installations? Is it better to just 
put klog in the login script?

Thanks,

-Stephen-