Using UNIX Remote Services in the AFS Environment

The AFS distribution includes modified versions of several standard UNIX commands, daemons and programs that provide remote services, including the following:

These modifications enable the commands to handle AFS authentication information (tokens). This enables issuers to be recognized on the remote machine as an authenticated AFS user.

Replacing the standard versions of these programs in your file tree with the AFS-modified versions is optional. It is likely that AFS's transparent access reduces the need for some of the programs anyway, especially those involved in transferring files from machine to machine, like the ftpd and rcp programs.

If you decide to use the AFS versions of these commands, be aware that several of them are interdependent. For example, the passing of AFS authentication information works correctly with the rcp command only if you are using the AFS version of both the rcp and inetd commands.

The conventional installation location for the modified remote commands are the /usr/afsws/bin and /usr/afsws/etc directories. To learn more about commands' functionality, see their reference pages in the OpenAFS Administration Reference.