[OpenAFS-devel] openafs cell and contrib area?

[Nathan Neulinger]

> - the problem of cooperating with regions under separate administration was
> why cells were invented.  (that, and the fact that inventing cells was Quick
> And Dirty).  Aesthetically, I'd like to see a new model hew as closely to the
> old one as possible.  Simplicity *is* a virtue.

Right - why do we need to have a big distributed openafs.org cell? (I
mean, it would be nice, but is it critical?)

> - the flexibility is useful, even if you can't get perfect subdivision of
> authority.  I'm willing to accept that Joe can frig with Bob's server
> somewhat, for instance, by releasing volumes which are replicated in both
> places.  That's awfully minor, and if Bob doesn't like it, then he can put his
> own resources in his own cell, or remove the local replica on his server, or
> write a script to remove it every 5 minutes.

Well, one thing that might be nice to do here would be the idea of a
'pull replicate' instead of a push replicate. Somehow allow anyone with
the appropriate permissions on a volume to PULL the volume from a remote
server. The remote server needn't even be aware that the replicate
exists, other than the initial validation of permissions. 

Actually, something I've wished afs had for a long time is the concept
of a server side cache. For example - I've got a bunch of local afs
servers with big disks on them that aren't used. It would be nice if the
afs clients could somehow ask the LOCAL file servers to get a callback
to a particular file on their behalf, and then that client could then
retrieve it from the cache on the server instead. i.e. allow AFS servers
to proxy AFS servers. 

The benefit would be that if you have 10 machines in the cell accessing
transarc, you don't have to sit and wait for transarc's network/server
on all 10 of them, just the first one to access a particular file. 

-- Nathan

------------------------------------------------------------
Nathan Neulinger                       EMail:  nneul@umr.edu
University of Missouri - Rolla         Phone: (573) 341-4841
CIS - Systems Programming                Fax: (573) 341-4216