[OpenAFS-devel] Xserve saga, continued

[Valerio Luccio]

  I'm posting this to two lists so that different audiences might read it.

I've been trying to get the server part of AFS to work on an Apple 
Xserve (OS X 10.2) and I've had many problems. Here's a summary of my 
efforts so far.

--------- Using RAID sets  ---------

The server does not seem to work using raided volumes that use the 
Apple's software RAID.

--------- Getting the "/vicepx" to mount under "/" and be recognized 
---------

If you create an "/etc/fstab" file (does not exist by default in OS X 
10.2) and specify the disk using the LABEL rather than the device name, 
it works:

    LABEL=VICEPA /vicepa ufs rw 0 2

That's because the OS assigns the device name to the disks on the fly 
and in parallel, so your disk can get assigned a different device name 
each time.

This does not solve all the problems: AFS does not see the partition 
unless the info is stored in the NetInfo database. There are three 
solutions to the problem:

   1. You are supposed to be able to configure the Mac so that it search
      the BSD-style flat files, including /etc/fstab.
   2. As part of the startup script, the /etc/fstab file can be parsed
      and all of the /vicepxx mount points can be loaded into the
      NetInfo database using niload.
   3. AFS uses "getfsent" to get the partition names (and if they are
      not loaded into the NetInfo database it does not see them), but
      the mount command for Darwin actually uses "getmntinfo", and this
      querries the actually mounted partitions.

I haven't been able to get 1) to work and the info provided by Apple is 
minimal and confusing. Method 2) works, but is ugly and is not 
guaranteed to work in the future if Apple decides to change something. 
Method 3) is the cleanest, but I'm not sure how much code changes it 
involves. From a first quick scan of the source code it seems to be 
quite doable, but I don't know which pitfalls I will encounter. In any 
case, I'll try it and report the result and submit a change to the 
developer team to be incorporated into the release.

--------- Replicating Volumes ---------

As soon as you issue a "vos release", the disk gets corrupted. A "bos 
salvage" does not remedy the situation and the volume is lost forever. I 
have no idea what to do about this.

-- 
Valerio Luccio                  (212) 998-8736
Center For Neural Science       4 Washington Place, Room 935
New York University             New York, NY 10003

        "In an open world, who needs windows or gates?"