[Macpartners] percentages

[Albert Willis]

On Oct 17, 2006, at 10:56 AM, Duncan Kincaid wrote:

> OpenAFS worked quite well in Panther (though still cumbersome to  
> set up owing to need for matching Mac OS UIDs and Athena UIDs and  
> NO Finder GUI for listing and setting ACLs, and Finder Error -32  
> whenever copying/deleting files from across cells).
>
> OpenAFS works noticeably less well under Tiger. Same problems as  
> above but with occasional kernel panics thrown in.
>
> I am encouraged by Al's note. Last I heard from an Apple engineer  
> at a MacPartner's meeting: AFS is of little interest to Apple  
> ("small static space--limited to higher education") and so Apple  
> will not spend any significant resources on it.

I've talked to Apple folks extensively about this issue; I'd phrase  
it as they can't justify devoting the engineering resources required  
to integrate AFS support into the operating system for a smallish  
number of customers. And while they understand the virtues of AFS,  
most of their customers are using other network file systems such as  
NFS, SBM/CIFS, etc.

The fact that AFS broke under Tiger certainly did get people's  
attention. The plan going forward (as I understand it) is to add the  
APIs necessary to allow OpenAFS to work more smoothly with future  
versions of Mac OS X. So while Apple may not add official support for  
AFS, it'll work with the right people to ensure it doesn't break  
either. If you think about it, if both Apple and the OpenAFS do what  
they are supposed to, AFS will just work and it won't matter that  
Apple doesn't "officially" support AFS.

>
> Meanwhile MIT seems to be devoting more resources toward DFS... and  
> no support for DFS (to say nothing of seamless integration) on Mac  
> platform. Most recently they silently shutdown AFS services on  
> their Citrix servers which killed us, as 46% of our users (Mac  
> Users) could no longer access course lockers from their ArcGIS  
> Citrix session.... making ArcGIS on Citrix perfectly useless.

Apple knows about the desire for DFS support--trust me. I suspect  
we'll here something about it when Leopard ships.


>
> I suspect IS&T need reconsider their infrastructure plans (eg file  
> services and printing) in light of growing Macintosh presence on  
> campus.
> Of course if our department's large mac user base (46% student, 76%  
> faculty and staff) is an anomaly, then no such need.
>
> thanks
> dk

Going forward, I believe we'll have a more flexible infrastructure in  
place that will enable easier use of file and print services across  
all platforms, including the Mac.

   -- Al



______________________________
Albert Willis
Macintosh Platform Coordinator - Software Release Team
Client Support Services
Information Services and Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
awillis at mit.edu


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