[OpenAFS] Documentation for Preference Pane in 1.4.12 on MacOSX

Marcus Crestani crestani@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de
Tue, 06 Apr 2010 08:04:06 +0200


I have trouble getting the new maintenance release 1.4.12 working
properly on MacOSX 10.6.3.  We use Kerberos 5 to authenticate and our
user's homes are stored in AFS, so we need to get a Token at login time.
We have a working setup with OpenAFS 1.4.11 that obtains a Kerberos
Ticket during login and uses the loginwindow's LoginHook to convert the
Kerberos Ticket to an AFS Token.

After I've installed 1.4.12, this does not seem work any longer.  On a
first login attempt, I do not get an token at login time.  To get one, I
have to logout and login again.  But then, the Finder process stalls for
a couple of minutes with a spinning wheel.  Something is terribly wrong
here.  I have the feeling that the new Preference Pane and our previous
solution do not work together.

To understand what happens, I could use some insight on the new
Preference Pane.  Is there some documentation?  Especially, it would be
useful to have answers to the following questions:

- What is the purpose of the "Backgrounder" Launch Agent 
  it.infn.lnf.network.AFSBackgrounder.plist?  How is it connected to the
  Preference Pane?

- Where does the Preference Pane store its settings?

- What happens in the background when I check/uncheck the several
  options like "Get Krb5 credential at login", "Use aklog", "get
  credential at login time", "Backgrounder"?

- Where does the stuff under the "Parameter" tab get stored?  How does
  the AFS startup get these values?
  
I'd appreciate any help, either ideas concerning my described problems
or answers to my questions that should help me figuring things out.

Please CC me, since I am not subscribed on the list.  Thanks in advance!

-- 
Marcus