[OpenAFS] afs directory

Russ Allbery rra@stanford.edu
Sun, 10 Jul 2005 16:32:06 -0700


Michael Norwick <mnorwick@centurytel.net> writes:

> 6.  Rather than spend hours searching AFS archives WITHIN AFS, is there a
>      more timely sequence of events I can perform to find files within
>      the GREATER AFS filespace, i.e.  AFS DIRECTORY/YELLOW PAGES/GOOGLE
>      for AFS???

No, I don't believe there's anything like that.

> 7.  If I have to ftp or google to find a file on some .edu server what the
>      heck do I need AFS for???

AFS is a distributed file system.  You need it if you want a file system
that can be accessible by lots of clients, with reasonable security and
some nice facilities for transparent management of data.  You need it if
you've outgrown NFS, if you like AFS's volume release model, if you want
to use Kerberos to authenticate your file system on more platforms than
NFS v4 supports, or if you have a bunch of data already in AFS (due to,
for instance, your collaborators) that you want to have access to.

If you don't have any of those problems, or similar ones, you might *not*
need AFS.

AFS is not a replacement for the web.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>