[OpenAFS] some simple openafs questions

[Faheem Mitha]

Dear People,

I'm ashamed to admit that I have been administering openafs clients on
Linux for over two years, but still lack a basic understanding of how
openafs actually works. So here are some very simple and probably
rather silly questions. They are regarding things where I find the
online documentation not completely clear. I should say that I use
openafs on Debian (testing), which does so much of the configuration
that it makes it easy to be ignorant, though the choice of course is
mine. In what follows, the documentation refers to that obtained by
following the Documentation link from openafs.org, which seems to be
mostly IBM's own documentation.

Also, I'm using AFS on the University of North Carolina campus.

1) When using an afs client, the command `klog' fetches tokens from
   the campus server. Am I correct in thinking that this fetching
   involves use of kerberos on the campus server? I don't have
   kerberos installed on my client machine, though I have seen
   descriptions which involve installation of kerberos on the client
   machine. Is kerberos not required at the client end?

2) I'm considering trying to install a Openafs server on a Debian
   machine. I am not completely clear from the documentation whether
   it is actually nececssary to install and configure kerberos
   (kerberos 5 seems to be the preferred version). Parts of the
   documentation suggest that one could use the `afs authentication
   system', whatever this is. Adding to my confusion is that the
   openafs debian packages openafs-dbserver and openafs-fileserver do
   not mention kerberos even as a recommends.

   If it is not necessary, is it still desirable to use kerberos?

Does a tutorial for AFS server installation on Debian exist anywhere?
My impression is no.

Thanks in advance. Please cc me, I'm not on the mailing list.

                                                     Faheem.