On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 01:59:31PM -0700, Phil Nelson wrote:
> Hello,
> 
>     The proof-of-concept Coda appliance is now available via torrent.
> 
> http://coda.cs.cmu.edu/download/Coda.ova.torrent

Hello Phil,

Tested the appliance under Windows 7.

- it serves the files!

- networking in the VirtualBox did not work out of the box,
  playing with the setting made it operational (for an actually
  unknown reason)

- no kerberos authentication there, I could not test my usual realms

- files and directories are created with umask 022 which causes
  Windows to refuse deletion of the contents in the directories

- login (and Gnome) is in the way of the appliance's purpose,
  there should be always a shell or a simple graphical GUI to
  clog + cfs + repair, the rest is just confusing the casual user

It is nice that there is such a workaround for accessing Coda!

More thoughts induced by the experimenting:

It looks unclear how to integrate it nicely, given the dependency on
VirtualBox and its interfaces. The dependencies and the corresponding
UIs are not well suited for a file system client service.

(Actually a similar problem as it was with Cygwin which is also heavy,
has its own installer and updater and is more like "being an environment"
than "being a service".)

For a list of other issues while relying on CIFS see
http://www.openafs.org/roadmap.html
Despite the OpenAFS client being very usable in its current
incarnation, the developers have apparently chosen to implement
a native file system connection.
(according to
http://www.secure-endpoints.com/openafs-windows-roadmap.html#file%20system%20redirector)

Pity that Coda lacks the necessary resources for a similar development.

Coda's disconnected mode let me survive last week when a broken switch
cut off a server network - but I could still run all my usual programs -
residing on Coda on those lost servers.

The optimistic replication nicely complements the disconnected mode
when at least one server is available, whithout any administrative
interference. This has saved my day more than once. It also makes
the administrator life so much easier.

That's why I believe it is worth to develop Coda.

Regards,
Rune