[OpenAFS] Re: Question about directory names

[Andrew Deason]

On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 13:44:13 -0500
Hunter McMillen <mcmillhj@gmail.com> wrote:

> This is probably a real beginner question but why do some cellnames
> begin with a period? I couldn't find anything about this in the docs,
> or perhaps I missed it but I was hoping someone could clear up my
> confusion.

The ones with the dot prefix are (typically) read/write mountpoints; the
other ones are (typically) "normal" mountpoints. See
<http://docs.openafs.org/AdminGuide/ch05s07.html>:

>> It is conventional to create only one read/write mount point in a
>> cell's filespace, using it to mount the cell's root.cell volume just
>> below the AFS filespace root (by convention, /afs/.cellname). As
>> indicated, it is conventional to place a period at the start of the
>> read/write mount point's name (for example, /afs/.abc.com).

If your client is running with dynroot, such mountpoints are created
automatically, so it's more than just a convention these days.

> ls /afs/<Cell-Name>
> ls /afs/.<Cell-Name>
> 
> The cell without the '.' has folders named: service and users inside it,
> The cell with the '.' has folders named: service, users, bin, and share.

That cell probably has a root.cell RW volume that has some directories
(namely, 'bin' and 'share') that haven't been released to the RO.

-- 
Andrew Deason
adeason@sinenomine.net