[AFS3-std] Re: [OpenAFS-devel] openafs rxk5 - AFS_RXK5_DEFAULT

[Jeffrey Hutzelman]

On Wed, 21 Feb 2007, Jeffrey Altman wrote:

> I am having a small heart attack reading the above text.  Per-user or
> per-pag properties have the potential to raise significant help desk
> support issues.  While the concept is quite powerful it can very easily
> be used to give user's rope to hang themselves.

I think you're inferring something that neither Matt nor I meant.  The
idea is not that you'd be able to set every property on a per-user basis,
but that some properties could be per-user, just as tokens are today.

> If we were to provide per-user/pag properties we would very quickly
> be asked to apply the functionality to the sysnames list, crypt, server
> preferences, storebehind, and on Windows UseDNS, HideDotFiles, timeout
> values, locking options, character set, and those are just the ones that
> come to mind at the moment.

And in most cases, we'd have to say no, because some of those properties
are inherently global.  For example, we can't do per-user sysname lists on
many platforms, because the operating system's name lookup cache is not
per-user -- just getting this to work for the NFS translator was a pain on
Linux, and we have a lot more control there.

> while the power of such flexibility is tempting, is the added complexity
> and help desk costs really worth the benefit?

You get help desk costs by adding UI features, not API features.


That said, I really do think it's worth deferring until we actually have a
need for a per-user property.

-- Jeff