OpenAFS
Encyclopedia
OpenAFS is an open source
implementation of the Andrew
distributed file system
(AFS). AFS was originally developed at Carnegie Mellon University
, and developed as a commercial product by the Transarc
Corporation, which was subsequently acquired by IBM
. At LinuxWorld on 15 August 2000, IBM announced their plans to release a version of their commercial AFS product under the IBM Public License
. This became OpenAFS. Today, OpenAFS is actively developed for a wide range of operating system families including: AIX
, Mac OS X
, Darwin
, HP-UX
, Irix
, Solaris, Linux
, Microsoft Windows
, FreeBSD
, NetBSD
and OpenBSD
.
Many development projects are at various stages of completion. The following are several prominent examples:
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
implementation of the Andrew
Andrew file system
The Andrew File System is a distributed networked file system which uses a set of trusted servers to present a homogeneous, location-transparent file name space to all the client workstations. It was developed by Carnegie Mellon University as part of the Andrew Project. It is named after Andrew...
distributed file system
Distributed file system
Network file system may refer to:* A distributed file system, which is accessed over a computer network* Network File System , a specific brand of distributed file system...
(AFS). AFS was originally developed at Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
, and developed as a commercial product by the Transarc
Transarc
Transarc Corporation was a private Pittsburgh-based software company founded in 1989 by Jeffrey Eppinger, Michael Kazar, Alfred Spector, and Dean Thompson of Carnegie Mellon University...
Corporation, which was subsequently acquired by IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
. At LinuxWorld on 15 August 2000, IBM announced their plans to release a version of their commercial AFS product under the IBM Public License
IBM Public License
The IBM Public License is a free software / open-source software license written and sometimes used by IBM.It is approved by the Open Source Initiative and is described as a "free software license" by the Free Software Foundation ....
. This became OpenAFS. Today, OpenAFS is actively developed for a wide range of operating system families including: AIX
AIX operating system
AIX AIX AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive, pronounced "a i ex" is a series of proprietary Unix operating systems developed and sold by IBM for several of its computer platforms...
, Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
, Darwin
Darwin (operating system)
Darwin is an open source POSIX-compliant computer operating system released by Apple Inc. in 2000. It is composed of code developed by Apple, as well as code derived from NeXTSTEP, BSD, and other free software projects....
, HP-UX
HP-UX
HP-UX is Hewlett-Packard's proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system, based on UNIX System V and first released in 1984...
, Irix
IRIX
IRIX is a computer operating system developed by Silicon Graphics, Inc. to run natively on their 32- and 64-bit MIPS architecture workstations and servers. It was based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. IRIX was the first operating system to include the XFS file system.The last major version...
, Solaris, Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, FreeBSD
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...
, NetBSD
NetBSD
NetBSD is a freely available open source version of the Berkeley Software Distribution Unix operating system. It was the second open source BSD descendant to be formally released, after 386BSD, and continues to be actively developed. The NetBSD project is primarily focused on high quality design,...
and OpenBSD
OpenBSD
OpenBSD is a Unix-like computer operating system descended from Berkeley Software Distribution , a Unix derivative developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It was forked from NetBSD by project leader Theo de Raadt in late 1995...
.
Governance
Governance of the project is split between the board of elders who consider issues of strategic direction, and the gatekeepers who control the source repository. At the moment, all gatekeepers are also members of the board of elders.Licensing
Although there is no legal entity that owns the OpenAFS source code, copyright on many files is attributed to IBM. Most of the source is covered by the IPL, however several files in the tree are covered by university vanity licenses. All applicable licenses are listed in a file in the source repository called openafs/doc/LICENSE.Development
The contributors over the last five years have made significant improvements to both the implementation and the AFS3 protocol without breaking interoperability with the IBM/Transarc releases. Since that announcement was written, several large development projects have been integrated, such as: 64-bit MS-Windows support, MS-Windows 7 support, Apple-Mac OS X v10.4-v10.6 support, and the demand attach fileserver.Many development projects are at various stages of completion. The following are several prominent examples:
- Fileserver backend utilizing object storage
- rxtcp
- rxgk
- rxk5
- Instrumentation framework
- Byte-range locking support