AFS in Windows

5 Aug 2009: a new version 1.5.60 of the client has just appeared and older ones no longer seem to work.  I followed the instructions G:\Applications\IBM\OpenAFS-1.5.60\CERNREADME.txt very carefully, including the Windows Hotfixes, and it seems to be OK for me.

As usual I have mapped the CERN AFS root to drive P: in Windows (if you use some my software, you should do the same).  I also map drive I: to my AFS home directory.

Adapted from my older notes for NT.  There are some other notes but I think they are now partly out of date.

The IBM AFS client for Windows allows direct access to AFS files from Windows.  Advantages: 

• No need to transfer and synchronise copies of files all over the place, e.g., when analysing the output of some Unix program with Excel.
• No need to use ancient protocols like ftp (you can't do it in CERN any more anyway). 
• You can edit all your plain text files with one editor (before the AFS Client I was an Emacs expert; now I've freed up that chunk of my brain and, miracle, I don't have to constantly retrain my fingers to do basic editing operations). 
• Common-sense file management with Windows explorer (instead of  rm, cp, grep, mkdir  et al).
• The special AFS functionality (permissions, quotas, ...) is available in the AFS sub-menu that you get by right-clicking files and folders (no need to remember fs quota et al). 
• Visual reminder when your AFS token runs out.

Almost everything works in the obvious way.  The root of AFS appears as drive P: in my setup.  As always in Windows, you can have command lines if you really want.. 

Warning: use of the AFS Client does not seem to be encouraged by the NICE support in CERN because earlier versions did lead to problems.  The latest version has gotten rid of those and I have not come across any others (except the business about Unix links mentioned below).   Just to say that I don't take responsibility - I wrote this page for my personal use and to save myself time when other people ask me about it (which has happened many times ....).

Notes on installing it in CERN

1. If you have a new PC, use the administrator account to give yourself administrator privileges.
2. Make sure your NICE and AFS passwords are the same.  (Not absolutely necessary but normally a very good idea.)
3. Login as yourself, making the usual connection to NICE.
4. Install the IBM AFS Client from Control Panel/Add/Remove Programs/Add New Programs/CD or Floppy/, browse to O: or G:\Applications\IBM\ and take the latest version.  Follow the instructions usually to be found in a .txt file.  What follows below was for an earlier version but I think the details remain more or less valid.
5. You have to reboot.
6. Click the little padlock item in your system tray, go to Advanced tab, Configure AFS client. The following pictures show my settings: 
   
7. 
8. This shows my personal choice of drive letters, defined in the Drive Letters tab.  If you use some of the same software as I do, e.g., MAD with the LHC MAD optics database or Madtomma, then I strongly recommend that you map P: to the root of AFS as I do.
   
   
    
9. 
   
10. You probably then need to get a token from the tokens tab.

The problems

Most problems seem to come from the AFS servers or the network, not the AFS Client.  On those days when AFS is having problems, it is a good idea to click the padlock, go to Advanced and just Stop Service while you do something else.

Unix links are dangerous

Most of the time, I avoid using Unix links and I wish others would too. When I really have to create them, which is much less often than many think, I give them the extension .link.

Renewing tokens

Click the padlock, to see how.

File permissions, quotas, etc.

Instead of having to remember those weird Unix commands like fs listquota you can right click a file or directory and use the AFS menu.

Files out of synch between Windows and Unix

About AFS on a portable computer

When I first installed an earlier version of the AFS client on my laptop, I found that it caused problems when I disconnected from the network.  So for a while I was also careful not to include AFS files in synchronisations. 

However I have recently installed the latest version on my laptop portable computer.  Since the user account I use there is different from my AFS one, there is no automatic AFS access when I start up and the mapped drives appear with red crosses in My Computer to show they are not available.  When I do actually need it, I simply click the padlock in the system tray and obtain a token with the appropriate AFS account name and password.  Before disconnecting the laptop from the network, I simply stop the AFS service.  This works perfectly well for me.

Now (May 2004), I am getting a little more adventurous.   I have just tried making an AFS folder available offline using the Windows XP synchronization manager.   This seems to work fine.   If the laptop is disconected from the network, or the AFS client is not running, then I have offline access to the files.   As usual, it is important to pay attention to the little flashing computer icon in the notification area that tells you about offline changes that have not been synchronized.    So this is highly provisional but it would be very nice.    I am thinking about making the LHC optics MAD file database available offline for work with the Windows MAD-X.

In July 2004, there was a new version of the AFS Client G:\Applications\IBM\OpenAFS-1.3.70 which seems to deal with these things in a different, possibly better, way.  I h ave not quite understood it yet myself.  See the afs-install-notes.txt file and this useful FAQ.

Shortcuts

• CERN AFS users
• LHC projects
• AFS scratch space, etc.

Watch out however for other drive letters getting AFS assigned to them (this used to happen on NT ...).  This messes up shortcuts (it does not seem to happen any more). 

Upper and lower case in filenames

Further useful sources of information on the AFS Client

A very useful FAQ page 

the infrastructure group @ csail

OpenAFS

DOS and Unix file formats

KEDIT

SET EOLOUT LF

KEDIT also works very well in AFS.   The DIR command provides a directory listing, sorting and navigation that is much faster and easier to use than Emacs'.

Mathematica

To convert a file from DOS to Unix format, I wrote a function in the JMJUtils`BumpEtc` package (loaded by default with my usual setup)

DOStoUnix["file"] changes the DOS line end characters in a file to Unix ones.

In[909]:=Options[OpenWrite]
Out[99]=
{DOSTextFormat->True,FormatType->InputForm,PageHeight->22,
  PageWidth\->8,TotalHeight->\[Infinity],
  TotalWidth->\[Infinity],CharacterEncoding\[RuleDelayed]"ASCII",
  NumberMarks\[RuleDelayed]$NumberMarks}

so all you have to do is

SetOptions[OpenWrite,DOSTextFormat->False]

OpenWrite[ ...., DOSTextFormat->False]

Problem with skewed clocks

Not yet seen with Windows 2000, but let's keep the info here:

> The 'AFS clock skew' problem has been seen elsewhere on several
> occasions, fortunately in all cases it has come down to the same quirk in
> Windows/NT setup:
>

• go to the 'clock settings' panel (double-click the clock)
• set your time zone to GMT , hit 'Apply' and
• set the time to 'now' minus 1 hour
• set your time zone back to 'Berlin, Stockholm, ...'
• hit 'Apply' and verify that now the time is correct
• reboot 
• try the 'AFS authentication' again