[OpenAFS] Re: why afs backup is so poorly supported

[Adam Megacz]

Jeffrey Hutzelman <jhutz@cmu.edu> writes:
> and many of its features depend on the fact that all file access is
> via the fileserver.

I agree.

I'm starting to come around to the conclusion that the on-disk format
exists primarily for obfuscational purposes -- that is, it is the most
effective way to discourage people from locally modifying shared files.

If you look at it that way, it makes a lot of sense.  I guess there
really is no better way to reduce the chances that somebody
(benevolent) with local root will decide that today is a fine day to
"emacs /vicepa/your-volume-bits-here".

I mean, they have local root, what are you going to do?

> AFS is not intended to solve the "share your local filesystem"
> problem.  It was designed as a scalable, manageable distributed
> filesystem
> ... 
> The two problems are very different, and require different
> solutions.

They share a very large common subproblem.

In fact, the former is almost completely a subset of the latter.  I
think this is a compelling argument for modularity.  Some of the
vos-like features that are starting to show up in zfs are a good
start...

  - a

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