Unlike some sites, the administrators at my site must "sell" the users
on new projects, including the introduction of AFS. A vocal
minority of users don't want to change, and see the transition from NFS-based
to AFS-based file sharing to be, in their words, "a potential disaster".
I have fully explained all the benefits, and they are unswayed by
those arguments. Instead, they are concentrating on how they will
have to adapt to AFS.
I'd like to hear from other sites who have replaced, or mostly replaced,
NFS with AFS. What issues did you have to deal with in terms of
user acceptance?
The users have the following complaints. Perhaps you have encountered
simple answers/solutions to them. Please let me know how you handled
any of these:
RCS locking (Our researchers use co -l to prevent overlapping
updates of project files. This doesn't work under AFS
because of directory-wide permissions.)
Installation scripts (The users complain they will not be able
to run any packaged installation scripts because they
use chmod, etc.)
Does anyone have a summary sheet of what the users have to change
in their usual practices? The users have asked for a FAQ for modifying
existing practices. I'm not talking about remapping chmod to fs sa,
but more global issues like RCS. They would also like an estimate of
how much time they can expect to, as one user put it, "devote in modifying
our environments and working practices to AFS?"
Thanks for your assistance.
