[OpenAFS-devel] Re: Windows Loopback Adapter, revisited

[Scott D. Williams]

At 12:01 PM 11/23/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>Message: 8
>Subject: [OpenAFS-devel] Windows Loopback Adapter, revisited
>Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 15:59:38 -0600
>From: "Lantzer, Ryan" <lantzer@umr.edu>
>To: <openafs-devel@openafs.org>
>
>When my team was working on an unattended install of Windows XP that =
>would
>join computers to a domain, we needed to address the =
>SMBDeviceEnabled=3D0
>problem by installing the loopback adapter in an "unattended" fashion.
>According to the unattend file documentation for Windows XP, you should =
>be
>able to install the loopback adapter using the Windows XP unattend file.
>Unfortunately, the same unattend file that installed the loopback =
>adapter
>in Windows 2000 would not install a loopback adapter in Windows XP. When
>I requested help from Microsoft, we were told about the applications
>devcon.exe and netset.exe. In MS Knowledgebase entry 311272, it =
>describes
>the devcon.exe application and even gives an example on how to install =
>the
>"MSLOOP" loopback adapter. It also gives a download link for the
>devcon.exe application. The application netset.exe is described in
>Microsoft Knowledgebase entry 268781 and is available as a part of the
>Windows 2000 Resource Kit tools. I was able to use the netset.exe
>application to configure an IP address (a reserved static IP address =
>like
>192.168.100.1) for the loopback adapter and unbind it from the SMB
>server service. Unfortunately, I also had to reconfigure the real
>NIC(s) at the same time. I don't know if either of these tools will help
>with getting the AFS Client installer to automatically install and
>configure the loopback adapter, but they might help someone deploy
>the AFS Client at their organization.

Thanks for the info -- I will look into those.

>I tried to follow the directions you have given for attaching the AFS
>Client to ONLY the loopback adapter on Windows XP, but I had trouble
>determining the LANA number of the loopback device. By trial and error,
>I found it on LANA 3 on the particular computer I was working on. Do you
>know an easier way to get a list of LANA numbers in Windows XP? I think

For anyone who want just to experiment, here's a *very* quick and dirty little
command-line util:

www.unc.edu/~sdw/dist/openafs/lanahelper.zip

It just calls 'ipconfig /all' for you, then displays the lanas with their 
mac addresses.

>that it would be particularly useful if the automatic LANA detection
>were to bind only to the loopback adapter, if it is present. If the
>loopback adapter isn't present, then the default behavior of attaching
>to all interfaces would probably be appropriate.

This is the behavior enabled by the patch I posted.

>If we can bind the SMB server for the AFS Client ONLY to the loopback
>adapter, then we might be able to register the name "AFS" only on the
>loopback adapter, without having to worry about name conflicts (or maybe
>ignoring name conflicts?). When I get a chance, I will try this out to
>see if I can get URLs like \\afs\root to work instead of having to use
>URLs like \\%COMPUTERNAME%-afs\root. I'm not sure exactly what would
>happen if another computer on the network were using the name "AFS", but
>it shouldn't be too hard to figure out. If we could get this to work, =
>then
>we might not need to restrict Windows Computernames to 11 characters or
>fewer at our site.
>
>Ryan Lantzer

Sounds good! A static UNC would have other uses as well.

--Scott