[527] in Info-AFS_Redistribution
Re: some questions about using AFS to share core OS files
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Joseph_Jackson@transarc.com)
Wed Jan 15 17:31:46 1992
Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1992 15:54:58 -0500 (EST)
From: Joseph_Jackson@transarc.com
To: Info-AFS@transarc.com
In-Reply-To: <AdR9YSKBos3D01DF8M@citi.umich.edu>
Peter Honeyman <honey+@citi.umich.edu> writes:
> in the citi.umich.edu cell (and its predecessor, the ifs.umich.edu
> cell), we run our workstations "dataless" -- we don't put anything on
> the local disk that might require backup or update.
>
> we've done this since 1988 or so.
>
> it makes us vulnerable to network partition and other sources of server
> unavailablity, but that occurs rarely enough that we've never given
> serious thought to populating the workstations with local copies of
> system files (beyond those necessary for bootstrapping).
You don't have to leave all your OS files in the /afs tree in order to
gain the "dataless" attribute. Using package, a utility included with
the AFS distribution, you can have the system automatically maintain
copies of the important OS files on the local drive. In the case of
client drive failures, package can be used to rebuild the disk without
resorting to the traditional backup/restore operations.
At reboot time, package compares the appropriate parts of the
AFS-based OS tree with the local copies and updates the files as
necessary. This procedure also cleans out any extra files that users
may have created in the temporary directories. To recover from a
crashed client disk, you don't need to recover from backup tapes.
Instead, install the operating system with enough of AFS to get the
/afs mount point available, then run package. Package will notice
that there are MANY files that aren't the way they should be and
proceed to make copies and links until the disk looks like it should.
Package is quite configurable, so special case clients (such as print
spooler machines) can be handled with little additional trouble. At
CMU, substantial effort was invested by the system support staff (Hi,
guys!) to make package usable in their particular environment. In
addition to the Transarc supplied documentation, some ideas might be
gleaned from their wsadmin area, provided it is still accessable to
foreign users when you read this.
Joe Jackson.
