Rich,
>The University of Michigan directory structure (which is the same one being
>proposed) is indeed the right one to use. Given the afs_id you know
>exactly where the users home directory. This is exactly what you want,
>no lookups.
How would you compare and contrast the UoM structure with the following:
Let's say you have decided on 64 "mid level" directories
(eg /afs/@cell/u/u0/ through /afs/@cell/u/u63/).
You add a new user "deedee" with AFS-id, say, 1025.
Take modulo 64 of 1025 gives 1.
So, volume user.deedee is mounted at /afs/@cell/u/u1/deedee
and make a symbolic link /afs/@cell/home/deedee -> /afs/@cell/u/u1/deedee
Given the AFS-id, it is trivial to locate the $HOME.
Also, the key advantage of this is that the user volumes
are spread evenly across all the 64 "mid level" directories.
If you really wanted, you could still have the /afs/@cell/user/d/e/deedee
as a symbolic link to /afs/@cell/u/u1/deedee (at account creation).
--
paul http://acm.org/~mpb
"It's a tama-haven't-got-CHI!" --Ben (3) [you have to understand "CHI"]
