(This is a site-specific operational issue but we hope to give other AFS site
admins a heads-up for any user support issues. Apologies if you are not
concerned at all.)
Dear all,
In the next week, CERN will turn off the last two original AFS CERN VLDB
servers (or rather, the machines using their IP addresses). For reasons related
to our network structure and IP allocation, we could not keep the old IPs when
retiring the current server generation.
AFS clients still using (only) these IPs will no longer be able to connect to
the CERN AFS cell.
We have attempted to get the central CellServDB updated ahead of this change
(first with new IPs, then to use (only) DNS for "cern.ch"). However, CellServDB
is shipped by various distributions, and anyway only considered at (Linux)
client start.
How to check whether a particular AFS client is affected:
$ fs getserverprefs -vlservers | grep -E 'afsdb[0-9]+.cern.ch'
- if the output only mentions afsdb1{1,2,3,4}.cern.ch, the configuration is
DNS-based and correct - no issues expected.
- if the output mentions a mix of afsdb{1,2}.cern.ch and afsdb1{1,2,3}.cern.ch
(the current central CellServDB config), this client will switch automatically
to our new servers, possibly after a short hiccup - no major issues expected.
- if the output only has afsdb{1,2}.cern.ch, this client will not be able to
connect to CERN.CH in the future.
Our recommendation is to use DNS - CellServDB should have an entry for the cell
but no IPs:
>cern.ch #European Laboratory for Particle Physics, Geneva
/>(next cell info here)
Regards,
Diogo Castro
on behalf of the CERN AFS service
