[OpenAFS-devel] Re: [OpenAFS] Soft mounts for /afs root

[Sam Hartman]

>>>>> "Derrick" == Derrick J Brashear <shadow@dementia.org> writes:

    Derrick> On Wed, 13 Jun 2001, Jeff Riegel wrote:
    >> We have been looking into modifying the AFS client to support
    >> "soft mounts" for the AFS root directory.  Currently, /afs is
    >> mounted from your home cell's root.afs volume and provides
    >> mount points to each cell's root.cell volume.  The modification
    >> would allow the client to see a virtual /afs with cell mount
    >> points determined from a client-specific database or
    >> configuration file.  A mechanism could be provided to allow the
    >> user to add a particular cell to his AFS root, similar to a Web
    >> bookmark.

    Derrick> Visiting upon this point, the ability of non-superusers
    Derrick> to add cells to the fake root.afs should be
    Derrick> configurable. Likewise, some balance between AFSDB and
    Derrick> this would be nice, but I can't think how you'd so it,
    Derrick> because AFSDB is basically the antithesis of a database
    Derrick> of cells. But this is all detail that can be filled in
    Derrick> later; The "hard" part of this work is getting the cache
    Derrick> manager to do all the right things with the fakey
    Derrick> root.afs in the first place.


I think what you want to happen is that if you try doing a lookup of
something under /afs it tries to do an AFSDB lookup and if that
succeeds, it adds the cell and the fake lookup result.  You also want
a database of shortcuts to add, but for actual cells you can just use the same mechanism that AFSDB uses that searches both CellServDB and AFSDB.