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(14) Installing AFS clients

Installing AFS clients

The installers and source code for all supported platforms are at OpenAFS.org. Unfortunately the documentation available largely dates from the IBM/Transarc AFS 3.6 release and is out of date in many respects.

Common to all platforms are the need to configure the following items for each client

Default cell (traditionally /usr/vice/etc/ThisCell; must be set)
CellServDB file (may be optional on some platforms now)
AFS mount point (traditionally /afs)
Client cache details (size and location, may be left at default values)
Optional client daemon parameters to improve performance

The client parameters are passed to the client AFS daemon processes at startup and determine such things as the size and type (memory or disk) of the cache, size of the file chunks passed over the network, and the sizes of various file metadata caches. In general the default values are very conservative and performance gains can be made by increasing them, at some expense in memory usage.
The CellServDB file (legacy) is used to provide the IP addresses of the database servers of the cells to which you may want to connect. The same information is usually provided by the DNS service mechanism, but not all cells use DNS, and older clients did not support it. The DNS provides a special record type to return the AFS server addresses associated with a given cell name. The CellServDB file takes precedence, so it must not contain incorrect information.

Traditional Unix platforms

The traditional Unix platforms (Solaris, Irix, AIX etc.) use compressed tar files for the installation mechanism. When unpacked, they create the following directories: bin, etc, include, lib - to be installing via copying or linking below /usr/afsws. Also root.client, root.server which contain the client modules and configuration (/usr/vice) and server software (/usr/afs). The various daemons and kernel modules are loaded through startup scripts in the standard ways (/etc/init.d/afs). Default cell, client cache manager configuration and CellServDB files must be edited after installation.

Linux

For Linux, the software was broken into modules and repackaged as RPM files. Which RPMs are needed depends on whether you want to install client, server, or both, and whether you need to be able to build from source. The naming scheme is generally openafs-susbsystem-vers-distrib-arch.rpm

For example:

openafs-1.2.13-rhel3.0.1.i386.rpm                All
openafs-1.2.13-rhel3.0.1.src.rpm                 All devel.
openafs-client-1.2.13-rhel3.0.1.i386.rpm         Client
openafs-compat-1.2.13-rhel3.0.1.i386.rpm         Client (opt)
openafs-debuginfo-1.2.13-rhel3.0.1.i386.rpm      All devel.
openafs-devel-1.2.13-rhel3.0.1.i386.rpm          All devel.
openafs-kernel-1.2.13-rhel3.0.1.i386.rpm         Client
openafs-kernel-source-1.2.13-rhel3.0.1.i386.rpm  Client devel.
openafs-kpasswd-1.2.13-rhel3.0.1.i386.rpm
openafs-krb5-1.2.13-rhel3.0.1.i386.rpm           All devel.
openafs-server-1.2.13-rhel3.0.1.i386.rpm         Server

After installation, the default cell, cache configuration and CellServDB files must be edited by hand.

Mac OS-X

The installer for Mac OS 10.1 and later is a native OS-X package format which installs with no special information required from the user (admin priviledges are required). The software is installed into /var/db/openafs (cache and configuration) and /Library/OpenAFS/Tools (all user tools and libraries). The user tools in /Library/OpenAFS/Tools/bin are symlinked to /usr/bin, but the administrator tools in /Library/OpenAFS/Tools/etc are not in the $PATH by default.

The /usr/afsws directory is not used - it can be symlinked if necessary to support scripts with hard coded paths to /usr/afsws/bin. After installation, the default cell, cache configuration and CellServDB files must be edited by hand. The default cache is 30 MB.

Microsoft Windows

The windows (NT-based, Win2k and newer) installer is a single .exe file which prompts for user input about which components to install. In general only the client is needed. The optional extended documentation is the same as available at OpenAFS.org and is out of date. The client software is installed into C:\Program Files\OpenAFS, along with many additions to the registry. An uninstaller in also provided. Command line tools are also made available in the %PATH% after installation. A client tool is provided to create Windows drive mappings to AFS pathnames, e.g.


 F: -> \afs
 G: -> \afs\northstar.dartmouth.edu\ufac\afsusername

During installation, the default cell name (e.g. northstar.dartmouth.edu) is requested, and also an initial CellServDB file. An option is provided to download a file from a URL:
http://northstar-www.dartmouth.edu/doc/restricted/CellServDB can be used. Windows AFS client uses the DNS (AFSDB) method to locate servers by default, so a CellServDB file may not be needed. The other options can be left at their default settings. After reboot, the AFS client software will be running, but AFS will not be accessible until drive mappings have been made. Some of the settings are systemwide (admin users only) and some are per-user. Open "Control Panel:Other Control Panel Options: AFS Client Configuration" to set up drive letter mappings and optionally adjust cache size and other parameters. The default cache is 100 MB.
If Windows logins are configured using kerberos-5 and a username/password database which is synchronized with the AFS usernames, tokens may be automatically obtained at login time. This is not the case at Dartmouth. The release notes for Windows contain many caveats about incompatabilities between Windows and Unix. Many of the new features in the Windows clients are to support mobile users with changing network connectivity and addresses (freelance mode, or Dynamic Root - cells are not mounted until they are referenced).
Windows explorer will display additional AFS properties (ACL settings etc.) for folders in AFS (right-click)
Older versions of the AFS client are supported on Windows 9x and NT4, but are no longer maintained or developed.

www.dartmouth.edu/comp/support/library/research/unix/files/afs/clients.html has local notes on installing AFS on various platforms (also out of date in many places).

installing.src last modified Jun 20, 2005

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