[OpenAFS] MS Access databases on AFS

Richard Heggs richard@ingenitor.net
Wed, 22 Sep 2010 17:38:29 +0100


Hi,

One of my clients makes good use of OpenAFS as a distributed  
filesystem, allowing engineers (who get sent around the world at short  
notice) to access the fileserver through a VPN.  It works well, and  
they like it.

However, they now want to put a MS Access database on the filesystem,  
with the intent that it will be accessed by the aforementioned  
engineers.  There will be some concurrent access, but not much.  There  
will be a couple of dozen users who will query and update on an ad-hoc  
basis, fairly infrequently.  The database contains critical  
information (yes, I know... I'm busy writing a replacement using a  
real database, but that's several months away and they need a solution  
now).

I remember reading severe warnings and dire imprecations about putting  
MS Access databases on AFS filesystems, about 5 years ago.  Is it  
still considered dangerous?

The server is running 1.4.11 on Linux.
The clients are XP (and shortly Win 7), and will shortly be upgraded to 1.5.77

Any advice would be appreciated.
Richard