[OpenAFS] Multihomed issues

[Jaap Winius]

Hi folks,

After messing around with a couple of multihomed hosts for a while, I  
get the impression that AFS, or at least the Debian squeeze install  
procedure for it, doesn't like to work this way. It's possible to  
prevent the file server from listening to certain interfaces  
(addresses) by using NetInfo and NetRestrict, but I wish I knew how to  
do something similar for the ptserver and especially for the vlserver.

When setting up a new database server (which is supposed to replicate  
via the Internet), it seems that, by default, AFS scans all of the  
interfaces on a new host to end up using the IP addresses associated  
with them. In my case, this includes several private addresses that I  
don't want any of the database servers to use. However, even if  
immediately afterwards I remove these addresses from a new server's  
CellServDB and restart it, it's too late: they're already in the VLDB  
and AFS is already trying to send a new RO copy of root.cell to the  
new server... using that server's private range IP address. Now I've  
got:

# vos volinfo root.cell -noresolv
root.cell                         536870915 RW          6 K  On-line
     oost.dapadam.nl /vicepa
     RWrite  536870915 ROnly  536870916 Backup          0
     MaxQuota       5000 K
     Creation    Sun Jan  9 15:32:11 2011
     Copy        Sun Jan  9 15:32:11 2011
     Backup      Never
     Last Access Fri Jan 14 18:17:02 2011
     Last Update Fri Jan 14 18:16:57 2011
     0 accesses in the past day (i.e., vnode references)

     RWrite: 536870915     ROnly: 536870916     RClone: 536870916
     number of sites -> 3
        server 82.95.170.57 partition /vicepa RW Site  -- New release
        server 82.95.170.57 partition /vicepa RO Site  -- New release
        server 192.168.26.10 partition /vicepa RO Site  -- Old release

It seems to be stuck like this. Can it be fixed?

Before discovering this, I had already used "vos delentry" to remove  
the private IP addresses from the VLDB, so "vos listaddrs" currently  
shows only the correct (public) IP addresses.

The last time around, I had succeeded in adding each new server only  
after first bringing down the internal interfaces. Once installed, the  
internal interfaces were brought up again and AFS ignored them. This  
afternoon, bringing down those internal interfaces was not an option,  
but I was hoping to get it to work anyway. I had no such luck.

This is a fresh setup involving two of the servers planned, so I can  
easily blow it all away and start over, but I'm wondering if it's  
possible to install OpenAFS on multihomed hosts without having to down  
any internal interfaces.

Thanks,

Jaap