1 OpenAFS News -- history of user-visible changes. October 19, 2001
3 * Changes incorporated in OpenAFS 1.3
5 ** Mountpoint directory information can be faked by the cache manager,
6 making operations such as stat'ing all cells under /afs much faster.
7 This is enabled by passing -fakestat to afsd, but might not be stable
10 * Changes incorporated in OpenAFS 1.2.5
12 ** A remote denial of service attack in the AIX and IRIX clients has
13 been fixed. Users of those platforms are strongly encouraged to
16 ** Fixed race conditions in fileserver that could result in crash.
18 * Changes incorporated in OpenAFS 1.2.4
20 ** Server logfiles now more consistant about format in which hosts are
23 ** vfsck on Solaris will now allow force runs (using -y flag) even if old
26 * Changes incorporated in OpenAFS 1.2.3
28 ** Cell aliases for dynroot can be specified in the CellAlias file in
29 /usr/vice/etc or /usr/local/etc/openafs, in format "realname alias",
30 one per line. They can also be managed at runtime with "fs newalias"
33 * Changes incorporated in OpenAFS 1.2.2
35 ** Solaris 9 and Linux PA-RISC are now supported
37 ** fileserver will not erroneously delay legitimate errors for 3 seconds
38 after 10 errors are returned (e.g. stat() on a directory you can't read)
40 ** Rx MTU calculation now works for Irix, Solaris and Linux
42 ** If afsd is started with the -dynroot flag, /afs will be locally
43 generated from the CellServDB. AFSDB cells will be mounted
44 automatically upon access.
46 ** The namei fileserver allows vice "partitions" to be directories instead
47 of partitions and will attach and display accordingly. Creating the file
48 "AlwaysAttach" in the /vicepX directory is used as the trigger to attach it.
50 ** TSM support for butc no longer requires editing a Makefile, simply
51 specify the --enable-tivoli-tsm configure option.
53 ** Linux builds no longer require source changes every time the kernel
54 inode structure changes; the OpenAFS sources will now configure
55 itself to the actual inode structure as defined in the kernel
58 * Changes incorporated in OpenAFS 1.2.1
60 ** vfsck on Digital UNIX and Solaris will now refuse to fsck mounted
63 * Changes incorporated in OpenAFS 1.2.0
65 ** AFS now supports --prefix and the other directory options of
66 configure. By default AFS builds assuming it will be installed in
67 /usr/local. In order to get traditional AFS directory paths (/usr/afs
68 and /usr/vice/etc) use the --enable-transarc-paths option to
69 configure. More details on the new directory layout are found in README.
71 * Changes incorporated in OpenAFS 1.1.1a
73 ** Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000 - Consistent versioning
74 Installation, AFS Control Center, Client dialog boxes and properties
75 pages for executables display a consistent OpenAFS version number.
76 Installation detects previous installation and prompts the user for upgrade
79 ** Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000 - Installation features
80 During installation the user can select the source of the CellservDB file,
81 AFS home cell, and drive mappings. During installation a drive path
82 mapping can include a variable that will be substituted with the current
83 UserName that is logged in.
85 ** Windows 2000/NT - Integrated logon
86 The Integrated Logon feature works now.
88 ** Windows 95/98/ME - Logon script features
89 The Windows 95/98/ME client now offers a command-line option for starting up
90 the AFS client without authenication. It is now possilbe to start the AFS
91 client first and obtain tokens, and map drives all through Windows scripts.
92 This helps using Windows 95/98/ME client in Kerberos 5 environment.
94 ** Windows 2000/NT - LANA numbers
95 AFS client now scans the LANA numbers to establish the correct NETBIOS
96 connection. NetBEUI is no longer needed. The user no longer needs to find
97 the correct LANA number.
99 ** Windows 2000/NT - OpenAFS naming consistancy
100 Further progress has been made to remove references to "Transarc AFS"
101 and replace with "OpenAFS".
105 * Changes since OpenAFS 1.0
107 ** AFS now builds with configure. The README for building has been
108 updated and includes full details.
110 ** A client system can now have multiple sysname values for @sys.
111 They will be searched in order when looking up files in AFS. The
112 -newsysname argument to fs sysname can be repeated to set multiple
115 ** A new system group is created for new cells (system:ptsviewers
116 with id -203). If this group exists, members of this group can
117 examine and read the entire protection database. They can examine
118 all users and groups and can get the membership of any group.
120 ** A new program, pt_util has been added to the distribution. This
121 program allows users to print the contents of the protection
122 database or to edit the protection database without running a
123 ptserver. It can be used to set up a new cell without ever running
124 in noauth mode. Run pt_util -h for help.
126 ** The fs setcrypt and fs getcrypt commands have been added. These
127 commands allow the system administrator to require that the client
128 encrypt all authenticated traffic between the client workstation
129 and AFS. The encryption used is weak, but is likely better than
130 sending unencrypted traffic in most environments. Some functions,
131 such as looking for a volume may not be encrypted, but data
132 transfer certainly is. By default data is not encrypted. At this
133 time no significant experimentation with server performance has
136 ** By default AFS is compiled with AFS_AFSDB_ENV, enabling the -afsdb
137 option to be given to afsd on startup. If this option is used, then new
138 cells will be looked up using AFSDB records stored in DNS if they
139 are not found in CellServDB. This means that users can create
140 cross-cell mountpoints in directories they control to access cells
141 not in root.afs, and that cells in root.afs need not be in the
144 ** AFS database servers can be marked as read-only clones. Surround
145 the hostname in square brackets on the bos addhost command and the
146 database server will never be elected sync site. This is useful
147 for cells distributed over a wide region.
149 ** The AFS servers now support the -syslog flag. This flag causes
150 them to log to syslog rather than to files. This flag is not
151 supported on NT. For all servers besides the salvager, the flag can
152 also be specified as -syslog=facility, where facility is an integer
153 facility code from syslog.h. A -syslogfacility option is provided for
154 the salvager to accomplish the same goal.
156 ** If the --enable-fast-restart flag is given when configuring AFS,
157 then the salvager supports the -dontsalvage flag which causes it to
158 exit without salvaging any volumes. If this is configured into the
159 third command of a fs process, then the fileserver will start without
160 salvaging. It will fail to attach volumes that need salvaging and they
161 can be salvaged manually. This provides significantly better server
162 startup performance at the cost of administrative complexity.
164 ** If the --enable-bitmap-later flag is given when configuring AFS,
165 then the fileserver creates bitmaps for free vnodes on demand, allowing
168 ** If bosserver finds a BosConfig.new file at startup, it reads this
169 file and renames it to BosConfig. This allows bosserver to be
170 reconfigured at next restart.
172 ** The bosserver can be placed in a restricted mode in
173 which AFS superusers are only granted limited access to the server
174 host. The following functionality is disabled when restricted mode is in
178 bos getlog (except for files with no '/'s in their name)*
184 specific exceptions are made for functionality that "bos salvage"
187 a cron bnode who's name is "salvage-tmp", time is now, and command
188 begins with "/usr/afs/bin/salvager" may be created. This bnode
189 deletes itself when complete, so no special "delete" support is needed.
190 This functionality may be removed in the future if a "Salvage" RPC is
193 The file with the exact path /usr/afs/logs/SalvageLog may be fetched,
194 since that is how bos salvage [...] -showlog is implimented.
196 Restricted mode is enabled using a new bos command (bos setrestricted)
197 or bossever command line switch (bosserver -restricted). Restricted
198 mode can be disabled by a) sending the bosserver process a SIGFPE (which
199 will then allow restricted operations until the next restart or
200 setrestricted command) or b) editing /usr/afs/local/BosConfig
201 (or BosConfig.new), and restarting the bosserver.
203 ** The bos UserList of trusted administrators can now contain
204 cross-realm Kerberos principals.
206 ** udebug now takes --server not --servers.
208 ** Several error messages have been improved to include volume
211 ** Several new ports have been included for UNIX platforms: Darwin
212 (ppc_darwin_12 and ppc_darwin_13), Linux 2.4 (i386_linux24), Linux on
213 the Powerpc (ppc_linux22 and ppc_linux24), Linux on the Sparc
214 (sparc_linux22, sparc64_linux22 and sparc64_linux24) .
216 ** Incomplete FreeBSD and Alpha Linux ports are included. The
217 FreeBSD port has a working server and the Alpha Linux port has a
218 partially working client.
220 ** A native client for Windows 95/98/ME has been added to the distribution.
221 With this program, a gateway machine is no longer required for Windows 9x
222 to access AFS files. One drive letter will be created on your machine by
223 default - Z:. The Z: drive will be the root of the AFS tree, allowing you
224 to browse all sites that have AFS servers available. Additional drive
225 letters can be defined for other AFS directories. A Windows Explorer
226 shell extension is included that allows you to right click on items
227 within an AFS tree to bring up an "AFS" menu item and perform various
228 operations on a file or directory. The most useful item is "Access
229 Control Lists", which allows you to view and edit the permissions of a
230 particular directory. Command line tools are also available in the
231 install directory. These commands include klog, unlog, tokens, kpasswd,
232 symlink, fs and pts. The installable includes a readme file that contains
233 more information on how to use the client program and known issues.
235 ** support for large caches in afsd. Cachefiles are stored in
236 subdirectories. The default is 2048 files per subdirectory, which
237 should work fine in most situations. You can use the new afsd
238 option -files_per_subdir to change this number. Note that the first
239 time you run afsd with this patch, your cachefiles will get moved
240 into subdirectories. If you subsequently run an older version of
241 afsd, you will lose all your cached files.