[OpenAFS] General instability on Windows

[Rodney M Dyer]

Peter,

We've been running the AFS Windows client for over 5 years in all it's 
differing flavors and versions.  And yes, I'd have to agree with you, it 
isn't the best at being reliable.  We even wen't so far as to add watchdog 
processes just to keep it running well.  We also schedule a nightly 
shutdown and restart of the service (with a cache delete).  It's really 
kinda silly, just pulling the network cable from a lan connected machine 
can cause the service to lock-up.

But unfortunately, we have not found any other file system solution for 
connecting the two worlds of UNIX and Windows with the global namespace 
that AFS allows.  I can only hope one day that someone will write (from 
scratch) a completely native solution for Windows.  I'm not holding my breath.

Good luck,

Rodney

Rodney M. Dyer
x86 Systems Programmer
Mosaic Computing Group
William States Lee College of Engineering
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Email rmdyer@uncc.edu
Phone (704)687-3518
Help Desk Line (704)687-3150
FAX (704)687-2352
Office  267 Smith Building


At 01:03 PM 2/28/2003 +0100, Peter Schuller wrote:
>Hello,
>
>we have been running the AFS windows client on about 4 machines for a
>while now (at two different installations/locations), and it is working
>well except that the AFS service consistently crashes after a while in
>operation. The users have to routinely reboot the computer perhaps once
>per day due to this.
>
>In 2 of the 4 cases the AFS server is on the local network, so
>connectivity should not be a problem. The other two access the server
>through a 256 kbit link. There is no indication that the problem is more
>prevailant at either site.
>
>Kerberos is used for authentication (with Wake). There is no apparant
>problem with the tickets.
>
>Is this a general problem with the Windows client? I guess not given
>that I couldn't find anything with Google. Are there perhaps any known
>issues/configuration settings/circumstances where the Windows client
>might act like this?
>
>Thanks!
>
>(AFS client version: 1.2.8b, from the pre-compiled binary on the site.)
>
>--
>/ Peter Schuller, InfiDyne Technologies HB
>
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