[OpenAFS-announce] GRAND.CENTRAL.ORG Public CellServDB

[Jeffrey Hutzelman]

For many years, Transarc and IBM have provided the service of maintaining
a common CellServDB file, containing entries for the publicly-accessible
cells of any AFS customers who wished to have them published.  This has
and continues to be a valuable service to the AFS community.

However, when the current OpenAFS organization was first being set up, its
Council of Elders agreed (at IBM's request) that OpenAFS distributions
would _not_ include a copy of the CellServDB file that IBM makes available
to its AFS customers.  This has created the need for an independently
maintained, public database of cell configuration information.

I am happy to announce that as part of its continuing mission to provide
services and information of general use to the AFS community,
grand.central.org is now attempting to fill that need.  To this end, we
have created the GCO Public CellServDB, which is a freely available
database of cell configuration information.

Like IBM's database, ours is 100% opt-in -- only those cells that wish to
be published will be included, and the database has not been pre-seeded
from any other source.  The downside to this, of course, is that it is
presently quite small.  In order for this to be a useful service, we need
cell contacts to register with us.  Once a cell is registered, we will
keep up with changes announced in public forums like info-afs and
openafs-info.  However, we will not add new cells announced in those
places -- that would violate our policy of including only those cells
which have specifically asked to be included.


The GCO Public CellServDB is available via ftp or http as a standard
CellServDB file, at the following locations:
ftp://ftp.central.org/pub/cellservdb/CellServDB
http://grand.central.org/dl/cellservdb/CellServDB

New cells, changes, and removal requests can be sent to:
GCO Public CellServDB Maintainer <cellservdb@grand.central.org>

To receive notices related to the GCO Public CellServDB, including
new and changed cells, subscribe to the cellservdb-announce list:
http://lists.central.org/mailman/listinfo/cellservdb-announce


-- Jeffrey T. Hutzelman (N3NHS) <jhutz+@cmu.edu>
   GRAND.CENTRAL.ORG/OpenAFS.ORG postmaster, webmaster, etc
   Carnegie Mellon University - Pittsburgh, PA