[OpenAFS] Re: sysname for 3.x linux kernel

[Ken Dreyer]

On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 2:24 PM, Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu> wrote:
> But it seems like a disruptive change without a lot of benefit to me. =C2=
=A0I
> suppose if we defined the default sysname as the list amd64_linux
> amd64_linux26, it wouldn't be that disruptive, but it might still be
> surprising (and would change the results of sys, which some sites may be
> using).

I would support the decision to use an unversioned $arch_linux, with a
fallback to $arch_linux26.

> The easier solution would probably be to update our installation
> documentation to encourage anyone installing AFS who is using it to run
> software set the sysname to something that makes sense for their
> environment.

Would it be feasible to make this change effective in a major version
release, say, OpenAFS 2.0? Speaking as a user of OpenAFS, the list of
things that must be manually configured has such a high learning curve
to newbies that choosing a useful, modern default would be great.

I know it's trivial to change these sorts of settings locally when you
have a fully-managed environment with something like CFEngine or
Puppet, and those tools are really awesome. At my site, my team
doesn't have that level of control on all our clients, and a large
configuration management solution is pretty intimidating to set up
anyways :-) So I'm hoping that we can get something upstream, even if
we have to wait till an acceptable time (like 2.0).

- Ken