[OpenAFS-devel] DRAFT: New sysname standard

[Garance A Drosihn]

At 1:02 PM -0400 5/8/01, Ted McCabe wrote:
>At 4:35 PM -0500 5/7/01, Neulinger, Nathan wrote:
>>Yep. I figure just have:
>>
>>fs setvar -name sys -value i386_linux22
>>fs setvar -name umr_arch -value redhat62
>>
>>Should be very simple to implement, just need to add an additional
>>userspace->kernel opcode/pioctl call that takes two arguments. A
>>"setvar" for a variable that doesn't exist would create it, a
>>setvar with no value would delete it.
>>
>>If no one else is already working on this, I'll be happy to work
>>on a prototype implementation for linux.
>
>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.

My guess is that it won't be TOO much of a problem.  Something of
an annoyance, yes, but not 'havoc'.  If your site does not support
the '@something' that some other site does support, you will just
get the '@something' (literally) version of whatever is being
referenced.

>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 might be nice, but I don't think it's necessary.  It's also not
clear to me how one describes the correct values for the @-variables
(if they are dynamically-created @-variables, I mean).

Personally, I am not quite sure what I think of dynamically-created
list of system variables, but I suspect that it could be implemented
in a way that wouldn't cause too much trouble.

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn            =   gad@eclipse.acs.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer           or  gad@freebsd.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute    or  drosih@rpi.edu