OpenAFS for Windows - Thank yous and Outstanding Projects Report

The long term stable release, 1.3.66/70, is about to be announced.  The 
progress made of the last eight months has been the result of hard work 
by a very small number of individuals:
   
    Rob Murawski - NSIS installer
    Joe Buehler - patches to cleanup flexelint output
    Asanka Herath - lots of work on the SMB server; afslogin; lanahelper 
library; msi installer; ...
    myself

with the support of a small number of organizations:
   
    MIT
    Morgan Stanley
    Secure Endpoints
    Sine Nomine
    Skyrope
    UNCC

and individuals:
   
    Russ Allbery
    Frank Cameron
    Daniel Clark
    Rodney Dyer

I especially want to thank Rodney Dyer for his extensive testing of the 
daily builds.
Rodney's Windows configurations and uncc.edu cell have proven to be 
exception
stress tests for OpenAFS.  UNCC's Mosaic installation I am aware of 
which is executing
all Windows applications out of AFS volumes as well as storing all 
roaming profiles
within AFS volumes.  His recently deployed Hyperthreaded workstations 
have helped
to uncovered endless numbers of thread locking issues.  Rodney's 
dedication to identifying
reproducible test cases and providing remote access to test environments 
has been
invaluable.

Now is the time to plan for the work to be completed over the next six 
months.   The following is a list of the known
outstanding projects as of this writing:

   1. No longer use AFS Client Service "cell" as the default cell for 
individual users
   2. Re-write afsd_service.exe to perform synchronized thread startup 
and shutdown. 
      Currently there is no synchronization of thread creation which 
results in timing
      conflicts; and there is no attempt to cleanly shutdown the service 
which causes
      problems when restarting and prevents the implementation of a 
persistent cache
   3. Implement a persistent cache
   4. Prevent panic situation when the root.afs volume is not reachable and
      the AFS Client Server is not using Freelance mode
   5. Prevent panic situation when the IP address to which the SMB 
server is bound is removed
      from the local machine's network configuration
   6. Identify and fix the problems with running the RX library on 
Hyperthreaded systems
   7. Add support for Named Pipes within the afs filesystem
      (This is not currently a supported feature of AFS; it will require
      changes to the servers as well as the clients.)
   8. Re-write afscreds.exe to support:
         1. choosing between Kerberos 5 and Kerberos 4 on a per 
principal basis
         2. providing users with the ability to map multiple cells to a 
single principal
         3. providing change password functionality on a per principal basis
         4. no longer include drive mapping
         5. configuration of afscreds startup options in shortcut
   9. Re-write afs_config.exe to be only "per user" functionality which 
does not require admin
      privileges
         1. default cell and principal for the user
         2. drive mappings
         3. visibility of afs creds and setting of afs creds startup options
  10. Create new afs_admin.exe tool to be installed in the administrator 
folder (or use MMS)
      which contains
         1. afs client service cell name
         2. integrated logon configuration
         3. Gateway configuration
         4. start/stop service
         5. global drive mapping
         6. submount management
         7. file/volume server preferences
         8. afs cells
         9. cache configuration
        10. diagnostics
        11. network configuration
        12. miscellaneous
        13. need to add support for all of the new registry values since 
1.2.8
  11. Identify why 16-bit DOS applications executed out of AFS fail
  12. Create new Windows Security Group to which users can be added for 
them to become AFS
      Client Administrators
  13. Add support for configurable Icon file representing AFS folders 
within the Explorer Shell
  14. Documentation Documentation Documentation
  15. Large File support (> 2GB) for both SMB/CIFS server and RX client
  16. Integrate KFW installation into the NSIS installer
  17. Add support for record locking to AFS (requires changes to the 
servers)
  18. Unicode enable the SMB/CIFS server.  OEM Code Pages:
      1. prevent the use of interoperable file names
      2. force the use of paths no longer than 256 characters
      3. force share names to be no longer than 13 characters
      4. restrict authentication to ASCII only names and passwords
  19. Complete implementation of CIFS Remote Administration Protocol
  20. Correct the problems with overlapped writes which adversely affect
      Microsoft Office applications storing documents and temporary files
      within AFS volumes
   21. Development of afsmap.exe tool to provide AFS aware NET USE 
functionality
          afsmap.exe <drive> <afs-path> [/PERSISTENT]
          afsmap.exe <drive> <unc-path> [/PERSISTENT]
          afsmap.exe <drive> /DELETE

The 1.3.66 release is the most usable version of an AFS client ever 
produced for the Windows platform.  95% of client machines in 
organizations are Windows based.  Ensuring that OpenAFS for Windows 
works seamlessly with Windows is crucial to ensuring the continued 
success of AFS deployments worldwide.  I encourage all organizations 
that wish to contribute to OpenAFS for Windows development to contact 
me.  Financial contributions as well as in kind assistance are seriously 
appreciated.   Without the support of the user community the recently 
gained momentum will be lost. 

Jeffrey Altman
OpenAFS for Windows Gatekeeper