Changes between Initial Version and Version 1 of Lockers

Timestamp:

02/23/12 11:18:29 (12 years ago)

Author:

jdreed

Comment:

--

Lockers

@@ +1 @@
+Athena imposes a filesystem-independent layer of indirection on file
+storage called "lockers".  Because most Athena lockers currently live
+in AFS, lockers may seem a little inconvenient and pointless, but the
+concept may come in handy if Athena ever moves to a different
+filesystem.
+
+Operationally, a locker is represented by a Hesiod entry with type
+"filsys".  The value of the filsys record is a string which usually
+looks like "AFS <pathname> <mode> <mountpoint> <pref>", where AFS is
+the filesystem type, <pathname> is the AFS path of the locker, <mode>
+determines whether tokens are desirable or required for the locker,
+<mountpoint> determines where the locker should appear on the local
+workstation, and <pref> is used to order filsys entries when there is
+more than one.  If the filesystem type is something other than AFS,
+different fields may be present.
+
+Users can make lockers visible on an Athena workstation using the
+setuid "attach" program.  The "add" alias from the standard Athena
+dotfiles attaches a locker and places the appropriate binary and
+manual directories in the user's PATH and MANPATH.
+
+A loose convention, documented in the lockers(7) man page, governs how
+software lockers should be organized.  Not all lockers are for
+software; in particular, user home directories are also lockers, and
+generally do not contain any software.
+
+Some platforms (Solaris and IRIX at the time of this writing) refer to
+lockers for most of their operating system and Athena software.  The
+mountpoints for these lockers are /os for operating system software
+and /srvd for Athena software.  On these machines, a third locker
+mounted on /install contains material used during installs and
+updates.