Bug 38719 – OpenAFS 1.2.10-r1 will not let me create root.afs volume

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED INVALID

[Description Stephen Bosch 2004-01-19 09:12:41 UTC]

Following the Gentoo OpenAFS docs, I get all the way to creating the root.afs volume, and then the problems start:

wopr root # vos create wopr /vicea root.afs -cell raid -noauth
vos: could not interpret partition name '/vicea'
wopr root #

This is in spite of the fact that the partition does exist:

Quote:
wopr root # mount
/dev/hda2 on / type ext3 (rw)
none on /dev type devfs (rw)
none on /proc type proc (rw)
/dev/hda6 on /usr type ext3 (rw)
/dev/hda8 on /mnt/storage type ext3 (rw)
/dev/sda6 on /viceb type ext3 (rw)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
/dev/sda1 on /vicea type ext3 (rw)
wopr root #

I have tried every imaginable syntax, and yes, I have also tried mounting it as an ext2 filesystem. No luck. Specifying the device does me no good either.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install openafs-1.2.10-r1
2. Follow Gentoo OpenAFS documentation
3. Enter Code Listing 4.16, with your parameters.


Actual Results:  
wopr root # vos create wopr /vicea root.afs -cell raid -noauth
vos: could not interpret partition name '/vicea'
wopr root #


Expected Results:  
It should have given some indication that the volume was created.

This is a new Stage1 install of Gentoo on an Athlon XP machine with 512 Mb RAM.
The vicea partition is on a 3Ware Escalade Serial ATA RAID controller, but I've
tried partitions on ordinary disks in the same way with no success (the RAID
volume, by the way, works fine on the local machine, so I doubt that's the problem).

I have no idea if the kernel module was loaded (I have since uninstalled the
ebuild). There is no CODA support compiled into the kernel, but that shouldn't
be necessary; OpenAFS is not CODA and the OpenAFS distribution includes kernel
modules. There's no mention in the Gentoo OpenAFS documentation that the modules
need to be loaded -- there *is* a reference to this in the standard OpenAFS
docs. Perhaps this is a case of bad docs?

I'm going to try to run OpenAFS 1.2.11 from the vanilla source tarball directly
from the developers and see if that works.

[Comment 1 Stephen Bosch 2004-01-20 14:07:31 UTC]

Okay, I have built from the raw sources. The raw sources work, which indicates to me that either the ebuild/docs are broken.

This package needs serious work.

Here are the expected results:
wopr bin # ./vos create wopr /vicepa root.afs -cell vodacomm.ca -noauth
Volume 536870912 created on partition /vicepa of wopr
wopr bin #

Note -- the OpenAFS docs use the word "must" when discussing what administrators say you should name the afs partition -- namely, '/vicepxx', and not 'vicex' as described in the Gentoo docs. I don't know if this is the reason the volume creation failed (there are a lot of things wrong with this ebuild).

Current workaround: build from raw sources.

[Comment 2 Jon Nials 2004-02-14 08:53:33 UTC]

The AFS partitions must be named either /vicepX or /vicepXX.  Originally AFS allowed only 26 partions (/vicep[a-z]).  Later it was expanced to allow (/vicep[a-z][a-z]).  Convention is to use /vicepa[a-z] for your first 26 partitions.

[Comment 3 Maurice van der Pot (RETIRED) 2005-06-30 14:30:05 UTC]

OpenAFS needs a developer to take up maintenance.

[Comment 4 Stefaan De Roeck (RETIRED) 2005-07-28 09:08:47 UTC]

The problems were caused by trying to use '/vicea' instead of '/vicepa'.  As a
side note, the current gentoo openafs documentation seems to advise the use of
/vicepX correctly.