[OpenAFS-devel] Re: Attempting to build a test environment. Help needed

[Andrew Deason]

On Sun, 18 Apr 2010 10:10:34 -0400
Jason Edgecombe <jason@rampaginggeek.com> wrote:

> Mohammed Gamal wrote:
> > Hi,
> > I am trying to build a test openafs environment for GSoC work. All I
> > need is to setup a local cell with some volumes, my main problem is
> > in the initial setup. I've cloned the source from the git repo and
> > built them and tried to follow through the guidelines in the quick
> > start guide, but I am a little bit lost as to what to do.
> >
> > Is there any standard scenario for setting up some simple test
> > environment, or is some public environment available for this
> > purpose?

You're doing the userspace NFS->AFS translator, right? You don't
actually need to setup your own cell for that. Until you get to the
point of developing authenticated AFS access, you can just access any
publicly-available AFS cell anonymously. If you choose a public cell to
try testing the translator on, though, you should probably ask the
administrators first, lest you accidentally DoS them or something.

Of course, setting up your own cell has the advantages of ensuring you
don't mess up someone else's cell, and I think gives you a greater
understanding of what's going on.

> I suspect that you will be using the demand-attached fileserver
> (DAFS). In that case, the "bos create ...fileserver..." and "bos
> create ...volserver..."  commands will be different.

Probably not, since DAFS is not the default (you'd have to know to
specifically ask for it).

Mohammed, if you do set up your own server/cell, I think I'd recommend
using the more stable 1.4.12 servers, not ones built from current git
master. Otherwise, you may end up debugging server issues. While we
encourage testing of the master branch and people helping us find
issues, I don't believe that's the focus of your project. Using 1.4.12
would make it less likely for you to encounter server problems.

You still want to use the client stuff from git master, though. The
1.4.12 servers can also be built from the git source you cloned, or you
can just get the prebuilt binaries from openafs.org or from your linux
distribution if you're on linux.

-- 
Andrew Deason
adeason@sinenomine.net