[OpenAFS] Files getting corrupted from some clients

Troy Telford ttelford.groups@gmail.com
Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:20:50 -0700


I've got a fairly small AFS cell - only a handful of systems connect to it,
though all of them are over a fairly diverse range of Linux distributions.

And I'm running into issues with files being corrupted.

On the exact same volume, for instance, I can have a host that works fine with
AFS -

* I'll take the Linux Kernel source, and unpack it.
* I then rename the directory that gets unpacked.
* I then unpack the source again.
* There are no differences in the two directories.

And then I have other hosts where I can unpack the tarball, and end up with
files that are truncated, missing sections of code, etc.

I know you're not supposed to use AFS for database-like things, but it seems
that if I can't even unpack a tarball without corruption, there's some sort of
problem that needs to be resolved.

All of my systems are using OpenAFS 1.4.8.  The "problem" systems don't seem
to follow any particular linux distribution - or kernel.  I have had two
systems that have the same binary kernel, the same source code, and one
produces file corruption, and the other does not.

I'm new to AFS - and am more accustomed to NFS; so I'm not sure if I'm just
doing something that AFS doesn't handle well, or if AFS varies that much from
client to client.  I want to give it a chance, but getting corrupted files
when a client writes to disk tends to put a damper on the whole experience.