FS_DISCON(1)

📦
version 1.8.16.1 · 10 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

💖 FS_DISCON — the "disconnected mode" manual, but make it make sense 💖

okay bestie, quick vibe check: this is a page from the AFS Command Reference (section 1, so it's a command, not a daemon or a syscall). Sit down, grab a snack 🍓, and let's talk about what happens when your network ghosts you and AFS just… keeps going.

✨ NAME ✨

fs_discon — manage the client's "disconnected mode" 👑

🌈 SYNOPSIS 🌈

fs discon -mode <offline | online>
    [-policy <client | server>]
    [-force]
    [-uid <uid>]
    [-help]

fs disc -m <offline | online>
    [-p <client | server>]
    [-f]
    [-u <uid>]
    [-h]

(yes, discon and disc are the same thing — AFS loves a nickname, and honestly? iconic of it.)

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

The fs discon command sets up "disconnected mode" in the OpenAFS Cache Manager. What that means for you: you can keep reading and writing files in AFS with no network connection at all, and every change you make gets recorded locally instead of being shipped off to a server.

Then, when the network comes back and disconnected mode gets turned off, all those locally recorded changes get sent to the relevant server. it's giving "I took notes while you were gone and now I'm handing them over." 📝

This command was introduced in OpenAFS 1.5.38. so if you're on something ancient, it's simply not there, no cap.

💀 CAUTIONS 💀

okay this is the part where I hold your hand a little: the OpenAFS cache manager's "disconnected mode" is still considered an experimental feature. It can be a bit rough around the edges, and — genuinely, fr fr — you may lose or corrupt data you have written while in disconnected mode. Use with caution. 😭

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • -mode <offline | online> — this is the on/off switch for "disconnected mode". If you say offline, the client goes into disconnected mode and stops making any effort to reach any server over the network. If you say online, the client comes back out of disconnected mode and any pending changes get sent to the relevant server. Now here's the tea 🫖: if there are errors while synchronizing those changes to the server, the client will stay in disconnected mode — unless you also passed the -force flag. (go read -force below, it's right there.)
  • -policy <client | server> — this picks the conflict resolution policy for when we resynchronize data after coming back online. You need a policy when changes were made locally on the client while in disconnected mode, and different changes happened on the server during that same disconnected era. When that collision happens, there are two possible outcomes:

If you say client, the local changes on the client will overwrite any conflicting changes on the server. Which means: if you change a file locally while disconnected, and another user changes the same file in the same place on the fileserver while you're disconnected, that other user's changes will be lost. 😬

If you say server, the conflicting changes on the server will overwrite your local changes. Which means: if you change a file locally while disconnected, and another user changes the same file in the same place on the fileserver while you're disconnected, your local changes will be lost. 😭

The default value is server. (so by default, the server wins. main character energy, honestly.)

  • -force — if you pass -force while coming back online, any errors during resynchronization get ignored by throwing away your local changes. So: if we write our local pending changes to a server while coming back online and there's an error while writing them, those changes are just gone. 💀 Without -force, that kind of error makes the client stay offline instead.
  • -uid <uid> — when resynchronizing local pending changes to the relevant fileserver, the default is to use the credentials of the user who ran fs discon to send those changes to the fileserver. If you specify -uid, we use the credentials for that specified uid instead. Heads up though 👀: this will only use the PAG-less credentials of the specified uid. It is currently not possible to specify an arbitrary PAG here. periodt.
  • -help — prints the online help for this command. All other valid options are just ignored, they get no attention whatsoever. 🙈

👑 PRIVILEGE REQUIRED 👑

The issuer must be logged in as the local superuser root. no root, no service, that's the rule 💖

🌸 SEE ALSO 🌸

Copyright 2013 Sine Nomine Associates

This documentation is covered by the BSD License as written in the doc/LICENSE file. This man page was written by Andrew Deason for OpenAFS.

okay that's the whole page, bestie, you're officially educated 🧚✨

OpenAFS · 2026-07-27 · and this was FS_DISCON(1), signing off — stay online, stay slay 💜🌟

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