Hi Martin, Graham,

On Mon, 2 Mar 2009, Bly, MJ (Martin) wrote:

> AFAIK:
>
> The CellServDB file is distributed by the folk at grand.central.org.
>
> We notified them of the changes we were making, and made the changes
> with suitable pauses to allow the new CellServeDB to percolate around.
> The latest update they have seems to be from November which has all four
> servers in it (the interim stage) and can be found at
> /afs/grand.central.org/service/CellServeDB (which is a link to the
> latest version).  At what frequency they put updates to CellServeDB into
> the wild and at what frequency it then makes it into the AFS RPMs I do
> not know.

I don't know about grand.central.org, but unless we forget we update the 
CellServDB (to the grand.central.org version, plus additions like 
hepix.org where required) in the openafs-client RPM whenever we push out a 
new release - which we try to avoid except upon minor SL releases. Now the 
current SL4/5 builds are from June 2008, hence the changes regarding 
the rl.ac.uk DB servers are not yet in.

I'd gladly provide an SRPM with no change but the corrected entry for your 
cell for SL5.3 RC2.5 and following SL releases. Please confirm that this 
would be

>rl.ac.uk               #Rutherford Appleton Lab, England
130.246.183.203                 #afs1.gridpp.rl.ac.uk
130.246.183.204                 #afs2.gridpp.rl.ac.uk
130.246.183.205                 #afs3.gridpp.rl.ac.uk

without wallace, no matter what grand.central.org has. NB a notice to 
this list could also ensure that correct entries for a cell are provided 
with any default SL installation, independent of the pace at 
grand.central.

Of course it's still up to Connie and Troy to accept such changes. Even 
though they are quite minor, they still mean rebuilding and pushing out a 
lot of packages.

> Standard practice is usually to overwrite any RPM supplied CellServeDB
> with the grand.central.org version, or with one of your own crafting, if
> the RPM supplied version gets too far out of date.

Right. I wonder whether the CellServDB (and maybe ThisCell, and maybe 
more) should be split out into something like openafs-client-config to 
make it easier for sites to customize the client and for SL to update 
CellServDB without having to push out a whole set of packages?

> The old server address is still active at RAL as a virtual address on
> one of the new servers (the old machine has been retired with prejudice
> after too many years server - no flowers), so if you use the
> single-server config, it should still work.  (For a while - I need the
> i/p address back, so at some point after grandcentral catch up, I'll
> reclaim it.)

An advance notice to this list would be much appreciated.

Cheers,
 	Stephan

-- 
Stephan Wiesand
   DESY - DV -
   Platanenallee 6
   15738 Zeuthen, Germany