[OpenAFS] Re: Unix domain socket and AFS

[Andrew Deason]

On Mon, 10 Jan 2011 10:27:25 +0100
Nicolas Bourbaki <ncl.bourbaki@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> Would it be possible for someone to explain why using Unix domain
> socket with AFS seems impossible. As an example, I tried to use Chrome
> in conjunction with a homedir stored in AFS. The browser creates its
> profile directory in the AFS space and tries to "bind" to a socket in
> this directory. From that point, the browser fails to start. I guess
> this is a current limitation of AFS and I'd appreciate some technical
> info about that.  Is this a bad idea to use Unix domain sockets and is
> there a workaround to be able to use applications which make use of
> them ?

It's not clear to everyone exactly how a socket created in AFS should
behave, and some people want different behaviors. e.g.  Should stuff
send to the socket stay local to the client, or should it be distributed
like AFS file data in some way? Should the client tell the fileserver
about the socket at all?

That is not a permanent unsurmountable problem, but it probably made it
harder for anyone to implement sockets in AFS. A few months ago Derrick
raised the idea for a solution that at least seems to meet the needs of
some socket users, without precluding a more general solution later.
Some technical points about this were discussed in this thread:
<https://lists.openafs.org/pipermail/openafs-devel/2010-September/017891.html>

As far as I know, nobody has worked on the code to implement that yet,
however.

-- 
Andrew Deason
adeason@sinenomine.net