[398] in Info-AFS_Redistribution
Re: AFS and NeXTs
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michael T. Stolarchuk)
Tue Nov 12 13:24:55 1991
To: heinle@cmf.nrl.navy.mil
Cc: info-afs@transarc.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 12 Nov 91 10:03:20 EST."
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 91 12:35:18 -0500
From: "Michael T. Stolarchuk" <mts@terminator.cc.umich.edu>
I've been wondering if having a separate root.afs for the
NeXT machines may help. I don't think NeXT wants an AFS
specific browser, and I don't think they are willing to
hand anyone the code (to make such changes), but
since most of the browsing problems come from /afs
(from doing stat's on files in /afs), and afs comes
from root.afs, creating a root.afs.next
may be a neat hack.
The question you have to ask is what to put in that
special /afs, and where the other cells would be.
I don't like breaking path names for other cells,
at the expense of the NeXT machine working better.
Using symbolic links in /afs could be a possibilly..
but I can't think of the right way to make 'em
so that the brower stat doesn't cause the remote request.
There is the possibility of using bad-hints to try
and get the AFS client on the NeXT machine to work
better... for example: lying about the 'fs lsmounts'
in /afs, while doing the rpc call to stat the entry
in the background, and later saving the results.
The best way to do this hack would
be to add something in the client: like another character
in the funny symbolic link to be the clue to lie (white lie)
about the stat fields, but do the rpc in the background...
Another solution you may want to try depends on how
you 'net-info' with the NeXT machine. I haven't tried
this one, but its hard to administer... Assuming you load
the ni database from some global database, if you muck the
home directory path names to be local, and make them symbolic
link to the true afs path name, I'd bet the browser
won't 'getwd' the home directories, but would use the path
name supplied in ni. The link could be done at a higher
place in the /usr tree so few symbolic links would be involved.
mts.
any more bright ideas?
