[OpenAFS-devel] automatically spawning afsd from kernelspace?

[Russ Allbery]

Adam Megacz <adam@megacz.com> writes:

> Is there any reason (other than that nobody's done it yet) that
> libafs.ko couldn't spawn afsd itself when needed (ie when /afs gets
> mounted)?

> This would (IMHO) eliminate the need for a lot of
> distribution-specific /etc/init.d stuff.  Default afsd options could
> be compiled into the kernel and overridden with bootprompt parameters
> or "echo [options] > /proc/afs/afsd_options".

Honestly, I like the current method of passing options to the kernel
better.  I'm not sure how this would eliminate the need for a lot of
distribution-specific /etc/init.d stuff; most of the cruft in the init
script revolves around loading the kernel module and setting the options,
and both would still be needed regardless of what mechanism you want to
use to pass the options to the kernel.

> And manually invoking afsd (as root) would kill the old afsd before
> starting the new one (so that you have a way of restarting afsd).

We already have a way of restarting afsd; just stop AFS and start it
again.  Works great (in 1.3; it tended to be rather iffy in 1.2).

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>