[OpenAFS-devel] AFSDB in Openafs 1.2.5

[Harald Barth]

CellServDB contains cell entries (lines starting with '>') and host
entries. The problem is that the entries in CellServDB are sometimes
used to describe what cellnames exist, for example if we build a
dynroot volume from that information. Other times the entries are only
used to find the host lines for that cell.

The host lines in CellServDB which hold the hostnames and IP-addrs can
be replaced by DNS lookups for AFSDB records. The big "religious"
question is what should happen if the entries in CellServDB and DNS
differ. Nsswitch.conf and other methods have been invented for host
names. I think AFS should use the same prioritry order as for host
names on the same computer.

One special case of the problem above is a CellServDB with a cell
entry for a cell but without host entries. On one hand we can
interpret such an entry that the admin of that computer wants to
indicate that there is a cell but the users should not access it as
there are no DB server entries. On the other hand, there is the in my
opinion more useful interpretation that there is such a cell, but the
host entries should be looked up in DNS.

Either that or invent a new way to register which cells should be
shown in dynroot at startup. To use AFSDB and dynroot today, my cache
manager needs a CellServDB with cell names only. With the
implementation of the DB-server lookup in OpenAFS today, that will
make vos and other commands that do not use the cache manager unusable
for these cells. I think the questions was if that could be fixed.

Harald.