Resources and Thoughts

OpenAFS has changed a lot from the product that Transarc shipped. There have been lots of improvements. For example, OpenAFS can use any filesystem for the server partitions. (I recommend ext3.) Also, OpenAFS no longer has its own fsck and doesn't do any funky stuff with inodes. However, the down side of this is that its hard to keep up with what has been changed and what is different from Transarc. Unfortunately, there's no manual of it all, but there are several places to get lots of good information.

The Transarc AFS documentation is all online. See http://www.openafs.org/doc/index.htm. This is really out of date as a lot has changed. Fortunately, its pretty easy to figure out what parts of it are still good and what parts are not.

The OpenAFS mailing lists are an excellent place for general questions, configuration issues, tracking development, etc. Some lists are pretty busy but its probably the best way to keep informed. See https://lists.openafs.org/mailman/listinfo/.

Who could forget Wiki? What's Wiki you say? I'm not really sure. But I do know that it is a web collaboration tool that many sites are beginning to use so that everyone can contribute a little bit of documentation and information about OpenAFS. See http://grand.central.org/twiki/bin/view/AFSLore/WebHome.

The OpenAFS web site has links to all the above and is the place to find the latest source code, and old crusty kitchen sinks. See http://www.openafs.org.

A surprising place to find information about OpenAFS is from the Gentoo Linux distribution. They have a rather detailed and up to date web page for setting up OpenAFS servers and clients. Well worth a read. See http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/openafs.xml.

Additions or corrections to this document are also welcomed and encouraged.