[OpenAFS-devel] Problems using the RedHat patches to get OpenAFS working on Debian using 2.6 kernel

[Rainer Schöpf]

On Wed, 7 Jul 2004, Christine Nattrass wrote:

 > Here's what I do when I try to run openafs now:
 > madscientistgirl@tesla:~/skype_ver-0_90_0_6$ su
 > Password:
 > tesla:/home/madscientistgirl/skype_ver-0_90_0_6# insmod /usr/local/lib/openafs/libafs-2.6.7.ko
 > tesla:/home/madscientistgirl/skype_ver-0_90_0_6# dmesg
 > ...
 > libafs: module license 'unspecified' taints kernel.
 > Found sys_call_table at c0442200
 > tesla:/usr/local# /usr/local/sbin/afsd -memcache
 > afsd: WARNING: Cache dir check failed (unable to stat cache base directory)

This happens because of -memcache (can therefore be ignored).

 > afsd: All AFS daemons started.
 > afsd: Can't mount AFS on /afs(22)

Error #22 is EINVAL, Invalid argument. Does this happen immediately, or
after some timeout? In the latter case, it may be that it cannot find the
cell servers in its home cell.

Try this:

 /usr/local/sbin/afsd -memcache -nosettime -verbose -debug

 > I evidently do have it set up so that was trying to use an xfs file
 > system for the cache -- how do I change this?

Several possibilities:
 a) use -memcache,
 b) replace the xfs by ext3 (or jfs),
 c) create an additional ext3 (or jfs) partition and put the cache on it

 >  Why won't xfs and work?

The AFS disk cache code assumes that it can get a file's inode by calling
the kernel function iget, which isn't true for xfs. Even worse, trying to
call iget for such a file gives you a null pointer, ie a segmentation
fault. Similar things happen for reiserfs. Personally, I think this is a
strange design of the kernel interface, but who am I to criticize the
linux kernel developers...

 > Is there any more information on this?

I'm afraid not. afsd will complain if the cache is on a reiserfs
partition, but die happily while trying to access the cache on xfs.

Here is an untested patch to at least give a warning:

*** src/afsd/afsd.c~    2004-05-08 06:12:27.000000000 +0200
--- src/afsd/afsd.c     2004-07-07 22:27:20.000000000 +0200
***************
*** 1049,1054 ****
--- 1049,1056 ----
        }
        if (statfsbuf.f_type == 0x52654973) {   /* REISERFS_SUPER_MAGIC */
            return "cannot use reiserfs as cache partition";
+       } else if  (statfsbuf.f_type == 0x58465342) { /* XFS_SUPER_MAGIC */
+           return "cannot use xfs as cache partition";
        }
      }
  #endif


   Rainer Schöpf