Hi Jarek,

> > Yes, I understand that adding -dynroot option in /etc/sysconfig/afs
> > will prevent the network test to be done. I don't know if this option
> > was designed for this usage or something else but it will do.
>
> This was actually designed to collect AFS cell information
> from DNS rather than from /usr/vice/etc/CellServDB

I think it was designed to allow the client itself to decide which
calls are accessible and no longer depend on which cells are mounted
in root.afs by the Cells AFS admin. And it prevents hangs during
client startup if the homecell's root.afs volume can't be mounted
because the server is unavailable or there is no network connection at
all.

NB -dynroot relies on cells sticking to the "root.cell" naming convention,
but I haven't encountered one that doesn't yet.

The option for complementing CellServDB with information from DNS is
-afsdb, and it may be on by default now, I'm not sure.

Both -dynroot and -afsdb won't prevent the client from using information
provided in CellServDB.

[...]
> So apparently not all cells (or their DNS) are setup to use dynroot
> AFS client capability (desy.de for example is, caspur.it, in2p3.fr aren't ....)

This should be no problem.

> That's one point, another side-effect is:
>
> If you happen to have a symbolic link in your root afs volume
> (which is the case for CERN: - /afs/{etc,usr,opt}
> ls -l /afs/
> [..]
> etc -> cern.ch/system/@sys/etc
> [..]
> )
> this link will not be visible while client uses -dynroot
> ...
>
> I think that if the '-dynroot' option is to be enabled
> by default this should be pre announced in advance and
> ideally sites should be asked to complete their DNS
> entries ....

Right. If a site has such links, and the clients depend on them,
that's a problem. But then, getting rid of all -dynroots in
/etc/sysconfig/afs with a sed or perl -pi command in %post
is simpler than removing the wget test from the init script.
And it's permanent, while upgrading the client package will overwrite the
init script.

Admittedly, it's just as simple to _add_ the options in %post.

> Talking about options to AFS client another one is
> kind of 'nice': '-fakestat':
>
> (from LISA 2002 AFS workshop notes)
>
> "with this feature enabled, the AFS client will provide stat information
> for volume mountpoints not yet traversed without contacting remote
> fileservers. This allows the use of graphical file managers to browse
> /afs without causing excessive hangs and timeouts. This feature is
> present in OpenAFS 1.2.7; OpenAFS 1.2.8 will include a further
> refinement to only present this behavior for mountpoints to volumes in
> foreign cells."
>
>
> ... I think that this one would be a candidate
> for inclusion in future builds ..

Yes, I believe it would be a reasonable and safe default option.

Cheers,
        Stephan

>
> Jarek
>
> --
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> _ Jaroslaw_Polok ___________________ CERN - IT/ADC/LE _
> _ http://home.cern.ch/~jpolok ___ tel_+41_22_767_1834 _
> _____________________________________ +41_78_792_0795 _
>

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