[OpenAFS] Evaluating AFS for in house use, RFCs...

[Jeffrey Altman]

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David Bear wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 03, 2006 at 12:51:22PM -0500, Jeffrey Altman wrote:
> this is exactly what I would like to do. However, there are a couple
> of problems.
> 
> Assume there are 3 clients all running msoffice out of afs.
> 1) user Tom has write acl's to the afs space containing the office
> application. He does the initial install. However, there is an ip
> based acl so that all 3 clients have rl permissions.
> 2) how does user Jane install office such that she only gets all the
> registry information but does not modify the executables that live in
> afs?
> 3) user Tom is diligent about apply office fixpacks and therefore the
> executable that live in afs are the latest and greatest. But how does
> Tom manage to push out the registry edits that microsoft loves to
> tweak when doing updates as well?

I suggest you read the documentation for installing Microsoft Office
on a network server.  These docs come from Microsoft.   The way the
software works is that each user gets a shortcut to an installer on
the network drive.  The installer ensures that the pieces that must
be installed locally are updated prior to starting the application.

Applications should (whenever possible) be executed out of Read-Only
volumes.  This provides you will replication and avoids ACL issues.

> 4) User Clark also uses applications out of afs. Most of these are
> simple exe's with dll's that live in the same location in afs. To make
> like easy, he just added /afs/realm.com/bin to his PATH environment.
> However, this seems to have slowed is windows machine down -- possibly
> because windows searches in afs for a lot more than it needs to. How
> does Clark optimize the 'easy' launching of exe's that live in afs.

If you add a network path into the PATH you will get slower performance
since the system must search it.  Place network paths at the end of PATH
or avoid do so entirely.  If the apps are executed via shortcuts, then
configure the path for the application in the shortcut.   If the issue
is that DLLs can't be found, learn about ".manifest" files.

If the user wants to execute some things in a command line setting,
construct a command file to configure the environment and start it from
a shortcut.   This is how the Microsoft Development tools work.

> I realize this is a whole new discussion thread, but from mail
> exchanges I've had in the past, this is where AFS really shines for
> some company that I won't name that deals with securities.

and for many other people.  As Rodney pointed out, each site has its own
custom tools and the issues related to application distribution have
more to do with the applications than the network file system.

Jeffrey Altman


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