i have been following this thread, and i haven't seen any description of what you are actually trying to accomplish. are you trying to make it so that only the users at "headquarters" can write to certain files, and that the users at the "district sites" will only be able to read the files, not make changes?

it sounds like you are heading for trouble trying to use replicated volumes and possibly funky mounting schemes to accomplish something you can do using acls.
why won't acls do what you want?

also, people have mentioned the issue of server quorum in a cell where the database servers are geographically remote from each other. before you design your cell, please consider the underlying network. with AFS, unless you have a really stable network underneath, you will find that putting fileservers or database servers out at remote sites is not necessarily a good thing. example: one cell, three database servers, one in sweden, one in italy, one in brazil, users in all three places, administrators in sweden; say quorum drifts to brazil, then network between brazil and sweden is down; the admins can't make any normal changes until the network comes back. how inconvenient!

as with any construction project, it's worth putting the time into planning. good luck!

anne




Quoting Klaas Hagemann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:

<snip>
I tried that this way and didn't get it:
a volume called software (~1 Gig)
in our headquarter the rw-volume on the afs server.
in a district the (nightly) ro-snapshot of that volume.
mounted into afs like:
/afs/domain/.software (-rw)
/afs/domain/software (ro)
so if I understand that right i should now be able to access the data under
/afs/domain/.software on both sides.

That is right, but you will always get the rw-instance in your headquarter.
in the headquarter it should use always the rw-instance and in the district
it should use the rw-instance (over vpn) on a write,
and on a read it should prefer the local ro-instance. but that doesn't work
for me.
everytime I accessed some software in the district it was transfered
completly over the vpn from our headquarter.
did I something missunderstood or have I done something wrong !?

If you choose the rw-path (the "dotted" path) /afs/domain/.software,
you will always get the rw-path. OpenAFS do not bother about the
location of the volume at this point.

If you use the "normal" path /afs/domain/softare, you will preferable
be forwarded to an ro-Instance of that volume. In your case, users in
the headquarter would use a volume in one of your departments.

The decision, whether to use a RO or a RW instance of a volume is not
made by the location of the volume. the decision is based on:
- is it an explicit rw-mountpoint (.software)
- are ro instances available

If you do not make a rw-mountpoint, the afs client will contact
ro-volumes as long as you can access one. Only if no ro volume is
available, the rw instance is used.

Then there is another point to be aware of:
"Once RW, always RW"
So if you have in your afs path only on rw-volume, all the underlying
moint-points will be rw too. So if your root.cell volume (which is the
mount-point for /afs/domain) is only available as a rw-version, you
will never be able to access ro-volumes.

the idea of this behaviour (take the lokal ro if available and just get what
you still need over vpn) was the coolest feature of the afs - i thougt. and
is the most case why I was looking on the whole afs thing - and not
something like nfs.

that is basically still true, but the decision is not made by accessing
a file. the decision is made by choosing the right mount-point for a
volume.

Which volume you have access to is a manner of mount-points and ACLs,
NOT of the location of the volume. In an ideal world a user do not need
to know on which server his data is stored.


Klaas

_______________________________________________
OpenAFS-info mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.openafs.org/mailman/listinfo/openafs-info


_______________________________________________
OpenAFS-info mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.openafs.org/mailman/listinfo/openafs-info

Reply via email to