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| Author |
Message |
cross
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AFS client on nextgrex?
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Sep 6 22:05 UTC 2003 |
I just thought of something; OpenBSD 3.3 has the Arla AFS client built
in. It is, perhaps, not the best AFS client, but works well enough for
most things. Given the large number of users (who participate in the
grex community) with accounts at the University of Michigan, perhaps we
should think about setting it up? I've got a few OpenBSD 3.3 machines
at home that I use Arla on, and I've found it pleasent to have access
to AFS space again. What do other's think?
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| 16 responses total. |
gelinas
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response 1 of 16:
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Sep 7 04:41 UTC 2003 |
umich.edu is not the only AFS cell in the world. I think having AFS on
machines is useful, even if only to get to the stuff permitted "read
system:anyuser"
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aruba
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response 2 of 16:
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Sep 7 05:05 UTC 2003 |
Could somebody explain in layman's terms what the question is?
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gelinas
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response 3 of 16:
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Sep 7 05:45 UTC 2003 |
Probably not, Mark.
AFS is a distributed file system. The servers can be accessed by any
appropriate client. If the new grex has an AFS client, then its users can
access AFS servers, to read and write (if so permitted) the files on those
servers.
As an example, I've installed an AFS client on my MacOS X laptop. I now have
access to my files on UM's AFS servers as if they were on a hard disk on my
laptop.
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aruba
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response 4 of 16:
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Sep 7 16:14 UTC 2003 |
OK, that makes perfect sense. Thanks Joe.
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cross
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response 5 of 16:
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Sep 7 17:13 UTC 2003 |
Nope, you're right, umich.edu is but one AFS cell. However, it seems
like the obvious one to mention when advocating for an AFS client on
grex. :-)
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gelinas
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response 6 of 16:
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Sep 8 00:26 UTC 2003 |
I'm glad it makes sense, but I don't think of those as "layman's terms,"
Mark. :)
True enough, Dan.
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aruba
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response 7 of 16:
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Sep 8 02:39 UTC 2003 |
Well, it's at the level I had in mind, anyway.
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gull
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response 8 of 16:
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Sep 8 14:57 UTC 2003 |
Layman's terms: It's like NFS or Windows File Sharing on steroids. ;>
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janc
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response 9 of 16:
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Sep 8 15:07 UTC 2003 |
It's supposed to have substantially better security than those.
Also, Marcus is something of a AFS expert. See the bottom of the page
http://www.linuxbox.nu/TRAINING/Instructorinfo.php#marcus
If you've got $1800 to spare, you can take the course from him at
http://www.linuxbox.nu/TRAINING/openafs.php
It's a separate file system. Marcus has talked about using it extensively
on Grex someday. I have my doubts about that, mostly because of the weirdness
with permissions (AFS has permissions only on directories, not files), but
as far as knowledge about AFS goes, I am an ant.
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dah
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response 10 of 16:
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Sep 8 18:06 UTC 2003 |
Yes, when you're on steroids you have bigger muscles meaning better security.
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gelinas
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response 11 of 16:
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Sep 8 19:12 UTC 2003 |
NB: the analogy of "NFS on steroids" only goes so far. There are enough
differences that it might be more accurate to say that a gorilla is a
chimpanzee on steriods.
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cross
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response 12 of 16:
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Sep 8 21:41 UTC 2003 |
Well, I brought this up; about the only detractor I can see is users
sucking up grex's bandwidth traipsing around in AFS space (AFS is a
*networked* filesystem; obviously, when you're using it, you're using,
umm, the network).
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dah
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response 13 of 16:
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Sep 8 22:19 UTC 2003 |
What if you're mounting a share from 127.0.0.1?
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mdw
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response 14 of 16:
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Sep 23 08:37 UTC 2003 |
Yes, I would like to see grex on AFS someday.
I'm afraid AFS doesn't make much sense for grex today though. AFS
requires a reliable network with good bandwidth to perform well, and I
don't think we have a good enough network connection to make that either
practical or attractive. Arla is not bad, but it has its own
limitations -- it can't handle files larger than its cache size, for
instance. Also I think the arla client in openbsd is still pretty old.
I tried building a newer version, but it failed with some incredibly
obscure error and I didn't have time to chase that down.
So, yes, AFS is pretty neat, and I'd really like to see grex get to the
stage where it's useful. But I don't think we're there yet, and we'd
need to see a pretty substantial improvement in network connectivity to
make it real. That's a shame, because it would be great fun to give
people a chance to wander through AFS.
[AFS doesn't have "shares". That's windows speak. For any real
instance of AFS, you have dedicated file servers with routeable
addresses, so "127.0.0.1" fails on 2 counts.]
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devnull
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response 15 of 16:
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Nov 28 19:33 UTC 2003 |
For all that AFS does probably have somewhat better security than a typical
NFS installation, it's still somewhat mediocre. The encryption that AFS
uses, as far as I know, is a slightly modified variant of DES. And the EFF
was arguing about 4-5 years ago that DES isn't really secure at all, having
built a machine to crack DES in a couple days.
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jesuit
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response 16 of 16:
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May 17 02:14 UTC 2006 |
TROGG IS DAVID BLAINE
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