[OpenAFS] OpenAFS on windows - profile in AFS, who uses it?

[Lars Schimmer]

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Jeffrey Altman wrote:
| Lars Schimmer wrote:
|
|>>> 3. reliability - some days windows hit a error while saving the prof=
ile
|>>> and no "readable" info could be found - I assume mostly unicode
|>>> problems
|>> need more details.
|>
|> Right now such a special "user profile".
|> Win client 1.5.3009 (fresh installed today, 400 MB cache, Windows XP
|> SP2) and user profile in AFS space, one RW, 3 RO and a backup volume,
|> all on OpenAFS fileserver 1.4.6 on debian.
|> On that special workstation the administrator, my personal user and my
|> testuser can login and logout without any problems.
|> That user has a 200 MB user profile, login works fine (I assume out of
|> local copy) but while logout it waits for at least 10 min, hit a  erro=
r
|> "file could not be copied, network unaccessible" aftr click on OK, it
|> just tells me "roaming prfile unaccessible" and I could login as other
|> user.
|> To be more exact: while login, it obtains tokens, user got a valid tok=
en
|> and can browse AFS space and even his profile in AFS space.
|>
|> After the logout hung, I logged in as admin and did a fs trace -dump,
|> maybe it can be helpful, where to send it to?
|
| What would be more useful is a log from SysInternals procmon.  You are
| trying to determine why Windows failed not OpenAFS.  More than likely
| I'm going to guess one of two things occurred.  Either a file that coul=
d
| not be written to the network due to a name issue was encountered or
| the CIFS client timed out the connection to the AFS client because the
| AFS simply could not write the file to the AFS file server fast enough
| to keep up with the data being written by the logout.  Remember, your
| cache is smaller than your largest data file.  The file can't fit in th=
e
| cache therefore the cache manager is forced to recycle buffers for each
| and every write.

Ok, grabbing a procmon log, which filters should I apply before I make
it public? Without its really BIIIG.
In this special case, cache is now 400 MB and user profile juts 140 MB
around, it should fit.

|>>> 4. the context menu - nearly all workstations has it disabled as it
|>>> "send the explorer into a timeout" - from 1.5.x on til now for the m=
ost
|>>> active win users the context menu is a problem - right click on a fi=
le
|>>> OUT of AFS space keep the system freeze for ~60 sec til the context
|>>> menu
|>>> appears. For files in AFS space it appears direct. Til yet I haven't
|>>> found any solution why it freezes, as in all my test accounts it jus=
t
|>>> doesn't appear, even on workstations on which the other users have t=
hat
|>>> problem
|>> provide a system this can be replicated on that is accessible via
|>> remote desktop and which has debugging tools for windows installed.
|>
|>> You are not the first to mention this but no one has ever followed up
|>> with a system on which the problem can be replicated.  I can't replic=
ate
|>> the problem therefore I can't fix it.
|>
|>> The explorer shell makes the equivalent of the call "fs whereis
|>> <object>" with the current directory being the folder that is active
|>> in Explorer.  Does this command when executed from the command prompt
|>> experience the same delay?
|>
|> Problem is, it just happens with some users, not with all. I try to ge=
t
|> a user with that problem in which no sensible data is
|> reachable/activated.
|>
|> And it seems like the fs whereis doesn't show that delay, at least not
|> for that user in which context menu problem appears.
|
| Which makes me wonder.  Is this really a problem with AFS?  Or is there
| some other AFS shell extension or security software that is trying to
| protect the user.    For example I can easily imagine a privacy / adwar=
e
| product that would block network requests triggered by access to the
| local disk by an Explorer extension because they believe that the
| network request must be an unwanted behavior.
|
| \\AFS appears to be a remote CIFS file server on the surface.

It worked for the user til a "special, unknown" event happens, the event
was not install software, remove software, firewall setup,..

| ----
|
| another thing I forgot to mention about tuning is that if you are on
| a local network and you are dealing with really large files you should
| consider increasing the chunksize with which the AFS client reads data
| from the file servers.

I set the chunk on this machine to 512 today. Lets see what it might brin=
g.

| Jeffrey Altman
| Secure Endpoints Inc.


MfG,
Lars Schimmer
- --
- -------------------------------------------------------------
TU Graz, Institut f=FCr ComputerGraphik & WissensVisualisierung
Tel: +43 316 873-5405       E-Mail: l.schimmer@cgv.tugraz.at
Fax: +43 316 873-5402       PGP-Key-ID: 0x4A9B1723
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