[OpenAFS] Storing system binaries in the /afs tree (was Building libafs.ko on Debian without full kernel sources)

[Kevin]

On Tue, 2005-05-17 at 15:29 -0400, Jim Rees wrote:
> The main problem I've had with putting system directories like /usr/bin in
> afs is that when you go to install something it will fail because
> chmod/chown will fail.
> 

I wonder if it would be inappropriate to make kerberos/afs principles in
such a manner that chmod/chown would not fail.  For example, in Gentoo,
if the install process wanted to install a file to /usr/bin which was a
symlink to an afs volume and then chown this file to the owner or group
"portage" then I wonder if I made a kerberos user called portage whether
that would be the best solution.  It's not a carefully thought out
solution, but just one that occurs to me.  Anyone see any glaring flaws
with that line of thinking?

> One way around this is to install as root/admin but that scares me.  I have
> modified /usr/bin/install so that if chmod or chown fails, it pretends to
> succeed, and that helps.
> 

Ok.

> A smaller problem is no cross-dir links, but that is usually only a problem
> for man pages.
> 

Not sure I follow.  Could you explain?

> Another way around this that works pretty well in large shops is to have a
> template machine that you do all your installs on, then copy everything (via
> something like rsync) into afs.
> 

True, but if you have lots of different architectures then you really
need lots of different template machines.  Seems a waste...

> After things are installed they usually just work.
> 

True.

> On the subject of Debian, in my limited experience apt-get/dpkg seems to
> work much better than rpm.

That mirrors my own.

Thanks for your reply, Jim.

-Kevin