[OpenAFS] Re: Getting started with OpenAFS

[Andrew Deason]

On Fri, 30 Apr 2010 12:41:25 +0200
Lars Schimmer <l.schimmer@cgv.tugraz.at> wrote:

> >  3.  do I really need a new fresh partition to start with or I can
> >  re-use an existing one and just make it available via afs?
> >  Actually #3 is the most important so let me explain. I have a
> >  server already and willing to make a large repository available via
> >  afs. Attaching a new hard drive or even changing partitions is hard
> >  for me as the servers is remote for me and has plenty of data
> >  already. So is there any way to make afs use just a folder
> >  somewhere? Any workarounds?
> 
> You need to spend a partition exclusive for OpenAFS server. OpenAFS does
> have its onw structure of files in the server-partitions (but it is not
> influenced by "false" files in those partitions).

To be clear, I think there are two things being asked here. One question
is "do I need a dedicated partition/disk for an AFS partition?" The
answer to that is no; you can just create new /vicepX directories, and
create the file /vicepa/AlwaysAttach to use them. If you want to use
some other partition, just bind-mount (or lofs-mount, etc) /vicepa to
/var/foo/bar/baz.

The other question is about whether you can use an existing directory
structure of data, which which Lars answered. You can use an
already-existing partition, but you need to copy your data into AFS; you
can't just use it straight from disk.

However, there is jhutz's hostafsd (and tafssrv), which does allow for
serving existing data via AFS. But as far as I know those haven't been
touched in awhile, aren't ready for production use, etc etc.

-- 
Andrew Deason
adeason@sinenomine.net