[OpenAFS] Re: [possibly dumb question] volume must occupy entire OS-level filesystem?

[zeroguy]

On Sun, 18 Dec 2005 17:02:10 -0800
Adam Megacz <megacz@cs.berkeley.edu> wrote:

> Regarding the paragraph above, I know what inodes are and the point of
> the namei() system call, but I wasn't aware that AFS fileserver
> instances came in two "flavors" with these names, or their exact
> meaning in this particular context (though I can take a guess).

namei and inode-based fileservers in AFS are just two different backends
for storing information on the vicepX partitions. Basically, namei
stores information in regular files and directories, and inode
manipulates inodes directly, and generally manipulates the filesystem at
a lower level.

Unless I'm mistaken, fewer people are using inode-based fileservers
these days, as the benefits of running one over a namei server (speed?)
are becoming less significant, and it's supported on fewer OSes (I
think...)

	-zeroguy