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The Andrew File System was developed as part of the AndrewProject

  • The Andrew File System is a NetworkFileSystem
  • The Andrew File System doesn't use traditional Unix permissions, but instead uses full ACL's, see AFSACLs.
  • The Andrew File System supports having multiple replicated servers allowing for high Reliability and Availability
  • The Andrew File System uses Kerberos for Authentication, Kerberos5 is now prefered, however Kerberos 4 is "native" to OpenAFS.
  • AFS uses "tokens", which are Kerberos 4 tickets stuffed into the kernel. The are tied to your UID, or to your PAG.
  • AFS can also dedicate part of your local machine for caching files allowing for very fast access to files even if you have a slow link to the AFS servers.
  • Originally called "Vice" (the Andrew Toolkit was known as 'Virtue')
  • AFS originally copied entire files over when you edited them, this was slow for large files, however this has been fixed now for a while. coda? still does this, its needed for disconnected operation.

Information about setting up OpenAFS under Debian: http://www.debianplanet.org/node.php?id=816

Some of the authors of AFS realised that AFS worked quite well for a while if you unplugged the network (since it caches everything on the local disk) but when writes occured issues arose. So as a research project they decided to work on Coda. Coda allowed fully disconnected operation -- you could take a laptop with wireless and wander in and out of range and it would correctly handle syncing all your files up, notifying you if there were conflicts. Coda was quite a success, then the people working on Coda decided that they could do better...

... So they sat down and started working on Intermezzo, Intermezzo is based on the same principles as Coda, along with the idea that Intermezzo should be as fast as using a local filesystem, and should do everything over well established protocols (such as HTTP). From what I have seen Intermezzo isn't anywhere near production quality yet, and Coda isn't used much and has been abandoned by it's developers. AFS however sounds like a great li'l network filesystem.

"li'l" network filesystem? Try scaling anything else the same way AFS scales...

OpenAfsUserCrashCourse

See AFSNotes for my notes on setting up an AFS server -- DanielLawson