I think I'm channeling the AFS developers when I boggle at this... files are
identified by 4-tuples in AFS (and Coda, which is based on AFS). "By path"
is rather difficult when a remote cell's file server can't possibly know
*where* its volume is mounted in my local cell's AFS tree (nothing but a
desire to easily identify what's going on just by looking at the path stops
me from doing "fs mkmount ~/.private/pafs/foo remote.cell:volume.name" where
"volume.name" is not "root.cell" --- and even the latter is just a
convention). The local client resolves the pathname to the appropriate
4-tuple and then hands that off to the remote cell's servers. The only
fixed requirement is that there is exactly one mount point for the AFS
client's root cell on a local filesystem (by convention,
$(</usr/vice/etc/ThisCell):root.afs on /afs).
Or I could use "arlad -d", which behaves much like an FTP client for
browsing AFS volumes (compare to Samba's Unix SMB client...). The path is
irrelevant, as I can tell it to mount as a root cell any volume I can access
in any cell I can access.
Pathnames are less than usable on a global filesystem.
--
brandon s. allbery [os/2][linux][solaris][japh] allbery@kf8nh.apk.net
system administrator [WAY too many hats] allbery@ece.cmu.edu
carnegie mellon / electrical and computer engineering KF8NH
We are Linux. Resistance is an indication that you missed the point.
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