[OpenAFS] Changing the hostname of AFS server

[Esther Filderman]

On 12/4/08, dave first <linux4dave@gmail.com> wrote:
>  However, I did this under the quickly departing tutelage of the admin
>  who has left, and don't really understand some nuances about the
>  structure yet.

You will learn, grasshopper.

>  So, the question then becomes, can I just use directories under root (
>  / ), when I move the old data volume to the new server, or must I keep
>  the same physical structure for a seamless move?
>

AFS requires that you use /vicep* for your vice partitions.  You can
call it something else somewhere and symlink it, but it's gonna have
to be /vicepXX.

It has nothing with seamless moving, and everything to do with what
AFS fileservers expect to see when looking for volumes to serve.

Also, you want to think about having huge partitions -- even
journaling filesystems have to fsck sometimes, and then there's volume
salvaging -- should your server crash, unless you're running DAFS
(demand-attach) from the beta (1.5*) tree, you will be running the
salvager (a volume consistency checker) on every volume on your
system.

I forget if you can have partitions over 2T in production (1.4*) OpenAFS yet.

>  From what I can see, I need to keep the same structure, unless there
>  is a way to map a volume to a subdirectory so that the user need not
>  be disturbed by the new physical location of the actual data.

The user never is disturbed by the location of the data, unless you
shut down a server with live data.  One of AFS's greatest features is
that you can shuffle data around and users shouldn't notice a thing.

I should have mentioned a different way to change the address of your
machine, if you have more than 1 server -- and the room to do it --
move all your volumes from the machine to another machine, shut down
the server & rename it, restart, move hte volumes back. It will take
more time than doing the "vos changeloc" method, but it will have 0
downtime for users.