Hi all,

> I'm building my first coda server.  I built everything from source using today's release, Coda 6.1.2.  I have read through most of the available documentation/wiki and according to what I have read there should be a "magic" command which is generated by vice-setup (which is always right) that should be used for configuring my first volume.  

I see in the archive http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu/pub/coda/src/coda-6.1.2.tar.gz
The vice-setup script in the archive would have created the root volume
after having started the server.

The corresponding part of the script looks as follows:
 ...
    echo " - createvol_rep / ${hn}${DP}"
    [ "$start" ] && createvol_rep / ${hn}${DP}

    if [ "$start" ] ; then
        echo
        echo "That seems to have worked..."
        echo "If you have a working Coda client you should now be able to"
        echo "access the new Coda realm"
        echo " - cfs lv /coda/${hn}/"
    fi
    echo
    echo "enjoy Coda."
    echo " for more information see http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu."

    exit 0
 ...
)

Yet I can not help saying that the installation scripts are far
from being adequate for a novice installation.

They were written long ago by file system researchers
for file system researchers, not for system administrators nor end users.
They are used now by the latter categories while they hardly are suitable.

Note that a better Coda client setup would not ask you any questions.
(only if you really know you need that, you should be able to instruct it
to place the cache on a certain partition of the local disk and/or limit
its size in certain ways, but only if you know what it is about).

In a similar fashion server setup does not need any information
besides
 - what is the f.q.d.n. of the interface to listen on
 - where you want to place your data (common for vice and vicepa)
 - approximately how much virtual memory you are willing to offer
   to the server process
 - whether it is the first server in the realm to be installed or not,
   if not:
   - what is the f.q.d.n. of the listening interface of the SCM machine
   - where is a copy of the SCM's file with the "update" secret

This information can be comfortably supplied as command line options,
thus making the scripts runnable automatically without resorting to "expect".

The secret tokens should be generated automatically and randomly,
the number of files in FTREE should be set to the current maximum
(is the penalty of overestimation really remarkable?),
the name of the first Coda account should be predefined.
The internal Coda id of the account does not matter anything, it should be
predefined as well.

Possible fine tuning of some options can not be done unless the admin knows
what she is doing. It is unnecessary in many cases.
Most of such work (like placing file data on [an]other partition[s])
can be done afterwards and does not belong to the initial setup.

Regards, Rune