The LNGS AFS cell

A.D'Ambrosio, S.Parlati

INFN - Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso

S.S. 17 bis Assergi (L'Aquila)

67010 Italy

Abstract

Since some years, the number of UNIX machines and people using them has been continuously growing at Gran Sasso Laboratories. The problem of software distribution and maintenance over different architectures, the needs of a common environment and an easy network access to LNGS files from any other INFN sites become soon evident. We tried to solve these questions using AFS (Andrew File System). Since July 1997 an LNGS AFS cell lngs.infn.it has been set up to be used by single users and experiments. In this preprint we present the results of this work, the problems we encountered and the future plans about AFS and other distributed filesystems.