[OpenAFS-devel] DRAFT: New sysname standard

[Derek Atkins]

Ted McCabe <ted@MIT.EDU> writes:

> This looks like a cool idea, except that I think it will wreak havoc 
> for clients trying to read filesystems in other cells.  AFS is a 
> shared filespace after all.
> 
> Such a scheme for allowing dynamic allocation of additional/arbitrary 
> @variables seems to require a method of exporting your @variables and 
> mappings so that other cells can understand your filesystem. 
> Otherwise, there's nothing standard about it.

This is already an issue today.  There are sites that use their own
@sys values.  I've seen, for instance, i386_rh60.  They just need to
have their workstation startup scripts run "fs sysname i386_rh60" and
voila, they have a new, "non-standard" sysname.  Adding new sysnames
do not, IMHO, make the problem any worse than it is today.

Quite frankly I don't think that users should be running programs out
of other people's cells unless they REALLY know what they're doing.
And in that case the user should be smart enough to figure out the
@sys (or equivalent) values.

Also, there is nothing that says there can't be a few pre-defined (at
compile time) @-vars....

>     --Ted

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
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