Subject: Re: NetBSD vs DCE/DFS, AFS?
To: Hans-Christian Becker <hcb@phc.chalmers.se>
From: Ken Hornstein <kenh@cmf.nrl.navy.mil>
List: current-users
Date: 12/20/2000 00:24:26
>This may be a totally ignorant question, but I'll ask it anyway:
>Is there any move of NetBSD in the direction of DCE/DFS and OpenAFS? 

Many people (including myself) view DCE/DFS as "dead" technology.  Interest
in it has waned, and nearly all of the DCE/DFS cells that I am aware of have
migrated back to AFS and/or "vanilla" Kerberos 5 (I know there are a few
holdouts, but I am skeptical that they will continue with DCE much longer).

I think the reason there is nobody is working on DCE/DFS is that few people
are using it nowadays.  I think if someone did the work for DCE/DFS, it
would be interesting ... but I can't see the demand for it today.  I
know of a few people working on OpenAFS, though.

>I realize that Kerberos 5 in the system is good, but are there any 
>other things that should/can/are be[ing] done to make NetBSD a 
>candidate for distributed file systems and -computing? My university 
>(which is currently running AFS) has a few years ago taken a policy 
>to migrate from AFS to DCE/DFS, and as far as I can see, only Linux 
>is mentioned as fas as free platforms go.

I find it amusing that your university has been in migration to DCE for
a few years now (I take it that means at least two?)  That alone should
tell you something.

--Ken