[Dev] coda filesystems

[Brent Verner]

[2002-02-20 02:45] Tanner Lovelace said:
| On Wed, 20 Feb 2002, Brent Verner wrote:
| 
| >   Do any of you have any experience using coda filesystems?  More
| 
| I've been playing around with it a bit.

cool deal!

| > specifically, can the coda filesystem be used to 'mount' single
| > files in an otherwise non-coda directory?
| 
| No, I don't believe so.  Coda requires a partition that
| it can use for it's own stuff and it doesn't store the
| files there like you would expect but more like a database
| would store stuff.

Yeah, I just got read an overview of the client-server protocol
and inferred this fact.

| For example, on the system I've been working with,
| the clients mount the coda filesystem at /coda.  Under
| there, I have a directory called /coda/users/lovelace.
| This is the same on whatever client I want to use.
| I have a file who's full path is /coda/users/lovelace/test.
| On the server itself, that file is located at
| /vicepa/0/0/74.  Coda manages the translation from
| it's setup to the user viewed filesystem.

right. this is similar to what I would like to do.  I was
thinking of mounting the clients at /.coda and symlinking 
the files I need 'shared' from their system locations.

| The reason it's setup like this is so it can do all
| the cool stuff like disconnected operation, replication,
| real-time backups, etc...
| 
| One other thing.  Getting a coda server up and running
| is not for the faint of heart.  It really helps if you
| have a good knowledge of how AFS (the predecessor to Coda)
| works beforehand.

Specifically, what I'm looking to do is work around the
lack of proper federated-auth-mechanism support across 
multiple systems -- linux, *bsd.  I intend to have all
account info in a PG database on one machine, and have 
a coda server on that machine present the appropriate
files used by the getgr* and getpw* functions.  If all 
this goes well, I'll implement a similar system to ease
the hassle of maintaining multiple proftpd passwd/group
files for our multi-virtualhost ftp set up at work -- I
absolutely _loathe_ having to figure out /which/ passwd
file has to be updated with the current system; there
must be a less error-prone/painful solution, and maybe
a coda hack will be that ;-)

thanks.
  brent

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