[OpenAFS] Many partitions: How?

[Horst Birthelmer]

On Thursday, May 13, 2004, at 08:57  PM, Sensei wrote:

> On Thu, 2004-05-13 at 18:45, Derek Atkins wrote:
>> Create additional volumes.
>>
>> NO DATA should live in root.cell.  root.cell should contain additional
>> volumes, like user, project, etc.  And THOSE should contain YET MORE
>> volumes, like user.warlord, user.senseiwa, project.afs, etc.
>
> Ok, I make a step back. How to make an afs cell and have it usable?
>
> 1.  vos create ... /vicepa ... root.afs ...
> 2.  set acls for /afs
> 3.  vos create ... /vicepa ... root.cell ...
> 4.  fs mkmount /afs/my.cell root.cell (and .my.cell)
> 5.  mkdir /afs/my.cell/users, set acls, chown to what I want
>
> 6.  pts to add a user (I use kerberos, so no KAS)
> 7.  mkdir the directory /afs/my.cell/users/user_a
> 8.  chown and set acls on user_a directory
> 9.  vos create ... /vicepa ... users.user_a ... (eg. with 1gb quota)
> 10. fs mkmount /afs/my.cell/users/user_a users.user_a ...
>
> Now, since for every user I have to make a volume specifying the
> partition and the quota, it seems that the total quota on a partition
> can be greater than the space available on a partition, if not 
> carefully
> checked... So, I have a 100 mb partition and assign 20 mb of quota for
> each of my 10 users. The sum of possible volume space is 200 mb!
>
> I thought there was the possibility of having different partitions seen
> as one ``global'' space, and in this space you create the volumes, 
> which
> are logical, with a quota. So you can get rid of the partition 
> location,
> but you mount them and that's all.
>
>
You never get rid of the partition...
The partition is just a container for volumes.

You can place exactly those kind of of volumes you were talking about 
in different partitions. You can get rid of the volume location. That's 
what your "VL" is for.
The Quota; Think of it as an upper mark not a reserved space for your 
users.

Actually for your "global" space that's true if seen globally. By 
globally I mean your entire cell.
You can place the volumes on any partition (where you think it would be 
enough space) and mount them into you cell. Now you can move the 
volumes from one partition to another and no user will notice. That's 
what the "distributed" in "distributed files system" means.

This is not some kind of disk striping over more than one server.

Horst