question re: samba on Digital UNIX 4.0d

[Peter Samuelson]

[John Kittel <John.Kittel at kaisertwd.com>]
> I may need to run the configure script using the --with-dfs option in
> order to get support for the DFS file system for OSF/1.  It also says
> DFS is a later version of something called AFS, from Carnegie Mellon
> University.

Yes.  CMU came up with the Andrew File System in the eighties, their
answer to NFS.  Then some time in the early nineties (?) the Open
Software Foundation (the OSF in "OSF/1") built on AFS to produce the
Distributed File System as a component of their Distributed Computing
Environment (DCE).  DCE is a framework designed to take care of the
mundane details of (you guessed it) distributed systems.  It includes
user authentication, the file system, remote procedure calls and (I'm
sure) much much more, with Kerberos doing the crypto for it all.

> 1) It hasn't been called OSF/1 for quite some time.

True.  It hasn't been called DU for awhile either.  Old names die hard.
Especially when what replaces them is something as silly as "Tru64".
At least "DU" was mildly amusing -- were they trying to imply that
other Unix brands were analog in some way?

> 2) I don't think Digital UNIX (now Compaq Tru64 UNIX) has a DFS (or
> AFS) file system. It has a file system called AdvFS, but I don't know
> if that is what the samba documentation is referring to....

Nope.  AdvFS is Just Another Fancy Commercial Unix Filesystem,
featuring LVM support and journalling just like Veritas, IBM JFS, SGI
XFS and all the rest.

> Does anyone know whether I need to use the --with-dfs option? (and
> under what circumstances?)

"If you don't know whether you need it or not, you don't need it."

Peter