OpenAFS 1.5.29 released. Production Version for Windows. Please test Demand Attach File Server.

1.5.29 is the recommended production ready release of OpenAFS for
Microsoft Windows users.  It supports all Microsoft Windows operating
systems from Windows 2000 through Windows Vista including both 32-bit
and 64-bit architectures.  The 1.5.29 release continues the recent
efforts at optimizing the performance of the Windows client and
improving its scalability.

For UNIX, Linux, and MacOS X the recommend production ready release of
OpenAFS is 1.4.5.  The 1.5.29 Windows client is fully compatible with
all AFS server versions.

Please visit http://www.openafs.org/windows.html for up to date
information on the status of the OpenAFS for Windows client.

For Microsoft Windows:

This release fixes the following bugs present in 1.5.28:

 * Callback Expiration was broken in 1.5.28

 * A null pointer dereference could occur in afslogon.dll (Integrated
   Logon Network Provider) in the rare case that
   QueryAdHomePathFromSid() would fail.

 * A race condition when evaluating private Freelance mode data
   structures

 * Freelance directory data version numbers were not properly updated
   after a change to the contents of the directory in the registry

 * The "symlink list" command would result in a memory leak and
   incorrect output when evaluating "msdfs:" links

 * The AFS client service could crash during shutdown if the daemon
   threads were accessing data that was unmapped or freed.

 * A race condition while reading or modifying the server volume list

 * The pthread implementation of pthread_cond_wait and
   pthread_cond_timedwait could return without holding the required
   mutex.  This error produced race conditions within the Rx library
   and several other packages resulting in unpredictable behavior.

 * The server reference count was not safely modified in all cases.

 * The background prefetch routine did not properly access all data
   buffers before attempting a buffer reservation.  This could result
   in unnecessary prefetch failures.

 * A race condition in the status cache object synchronization code
   could result in threads becoming stranded.  As a result CIFS requests
   would timeout unnecessarily.  This error was more frequently
   triggered on 64-bit Windows than on 32-bit Windows.

Other changes resulting in performance enhancements include:

 * Write buffer operations were sped up by avoiding the use of an
   unnecessary write lock when accessing the buffer data version.

 * Read buffer operations were sped up by removing out of date
   buffers from the buffer hash table thereby reducing the number
   of locks that must be obtained before the correct buffer is
   found.

 * Finish the implementation of smb_ReceiveTran2GetDFSReferral which
   improves the performance of share name evaluations on Vista and XP.

 * Return EAS_NOT_SUPPORTED when EA requests are received instead of
   pretending to succeed write requests and returning zero EAs for
   read requests.

 * Return ERROR_RETRY to the CIFS client when the server sends VBUSY.

 * When accessing data buffers, avoid locking all buffers associated
   with a stat cache object if the single buffer that is required
   has the correct data version and the stat cache object has a
   callback.  This is a very common case.

 * Reduce the default chunk size to 256KB in order to prevent read
   timeouts on low bandwidth connections.


MIT Kerberos for Windows 3.2.2
 The recommended version of Kerberos for Windows to use with
 OpenAFS is version 3.2.2.  KFW can be downloaded from MIT or
 Secure Endpoints.  64-bit Windows installers for KFW are only
 available from Secure Endpoints.
    http://www.secure-endpoints.com/index.html#kfw

Known issues in the Windows client:
  . Beta versions of the Network Identity Manager AFS plug-in must
    be uninstalled prior to the installation of OpenAFS 1.5.26
  . Windows Vista does not support the WinHelp file format used
    by afscreds.exe and afs_control.exe.  A download is available
    from Microsoft.
  . On Windows Vista, afscreds.exe is not User Account Control (UAC)
    compatible and must be "Run as Administrator" in order to
    start/stop the AFS client service.

Demand Attach File Server:

The Demand Attach File Server is a compile time option that produces a
file server that supports several new and important features:

  * an enhanced volume management library that supports:
    . lock-less I/O
    . on-demand attachment of volumes
    . parallel shutdown of the file server
    . on-line salvaging of volumes
    . automatic detachment of inactive volumes

 * a new salvageserver daemon which can salvage volumes on-demand

 * a modified bos and bosserver
    . fileserver state saving and restoration
      - host state
      - callback state

With the DAFS, shutdown and startup of the file server is significantly
faster.  Instead of salvaging a partition at a time, individual volumes
are salvaged in the background while volumes that do not need salvaging
are served by the fileserver to clients.  Volumes are attached on-demand
and detached when no longer required.  This reduces the number of
volumes that may require salvaging upon a restart.

The DAFS requires significant testing before it can be put into a
production release.  If your organization is willing to assist the
gatekeepers with testing this functionality, please contact us at
[email protected].


Please send reports of successful deployments to
[email protected] and report problems to [email protected].

Jeffrey Altman
for the OpenAFS Gatekeepers