[OpenAFS] Accessing multiple cells...

Shyh-Wei Luan luan@almaden.ibm.com
Thu, 7 Feb 2002 16:41:20 -0800


On Windows clients the equivalent of DynaAFS mode is called Freelance
Client support.  Here is the excerpt from freelance.txt (I will put it on
AFSLore Wiki as an exercise of using it :-) file that was sent to the
mailing list.  See the Usage section for how to use it on your NT box.

Shyh-Wei Luan

Freelance AFS Client

1     Introduction

The current implementation of AFS requires that all AFS clients belong to
a home cell. The home cell provides the client with a starting point to
mount the entire AFS file system. The client's top most level view of AFS
is determined by the home cell server's root.afs volume. Through root.afs,
the home cell also controls which cells clients can access.

To provide a more flexible and relevant view of the AFS file system to the
user, this projects aims to remove the need for a home cell and to allow
each client to customize its view of the AFS file system. To this end,
the current Windows 2000 and 9x clients for AFS have been modified into
a Freelance AFS Client that allows the user to mount and dismount AFS
cells at will, without the need of a home cell.

The new Freelance AFS Client also increases the scalability of the AFS file
system since administrator intervention is no longer required for clients
to access newly established cells. It also removes the client dependency on
the availability of the home cell. Previously, if the home cell were not
available, clients would not be able to access the AFS file system. This
critical dependency is not present in the Freelance AFS Client.

2    Usage

The Freelance feature is available only for the Windows NT/2000 and 9x
clients.  In 9x, it can be enabled by running afsd.exe manually with the
"-freelance" flag.  It can be enabled in NT/2000 by setting the following
registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\TransarcAFSDaemon\Parameters\FreelanceClient=1

(GUI support to activate this feature will be available soon.)

The Freelance client reads the available mount points from a file called
afs_freelance.ini.  This file will be created if not found and the list
of mount points will initially be empty.  New mount points can be added
using "fs mkmount" or the Explorer shell extension.

Shyh-Wei Luan

Derek Atkins <warlord@MIT.EDU>@openafs.org on 02/07/2002 06:03:23 AM

Please respond to <openafs-info@openafs.org>

Sent by:    openafs-info-admin@openafs.org


To:    "Steven N. Hirsch" <shirsch@adelphia.net>
cc:    <openafs-info@openafs.org>
Subject:    Re: [OpenAFS] Accessing multiple cells...



Do you have your client setup in standalone, DynAFS mode?  If
not, then you need to change root.afs in your 'local' cell to
contain mount points to the root.cell of all other cells you
want to reach.

-derek

"Steven N. Hirsch" <shirsch@adelphia.net> writes:

> Ok, this is probably a dumb question.  How can I convince the OpenAFS
> client on my WinNT box to see my local (private network) cell and
> simultaneously mount and access my employers cell (VPN gateway)?  It's
not
> a networking issue.  I can always obtain tokens for both in a given
> session.  And, by setting the client to be a member of a given cell it
> cheerfully grants file access to that cell only (whichever I tell it to
> belong to I'm unable to "see" the other!)
>
> Does my local cell server need to know about the foreign cell for any
> reason?  The machine it runs on does not have a route to (or know
anything
> about) the VPN gateway.
>
> Any help appreciated.
>
> Steve
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> OpenAFS-info mailing list
> OpenAFS-info@openafs.org
> https://lists.openafs.org/mailman/listinfo/openafs-info

--
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord@MIT.EDU                        PGP key available
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