3.7. AFS Authentication Tool Command Line Options

The AFS Authentication Tool (afscreds.exe) has been deprecated in favor of Network Identity Manager. afscreds.exe is no longer installed by default in the OpenAFS 1.7 release series. The following information is for historical reference.

The AFS Authentication Tool (afscreds.exe) supports several command line options:

  • -A = autoinit

  • -E = force existing afscreds to exit

  • -I = install startup shortcut

  • -M = renew drive maps (deprecated)

  • -N = IP address change detection

  • -Q = quiet mode. do not display start service dialog if afsd_service is not already running

  • -S = show tokens dialog on startup

  • -U = uninstall startup shortcut

  • -X = test and do map share (deprecated)

  • -Z = unmap drives (deprecated)

autoinit will result in automated attempts to acquire AFS tokens when afscreds.exe is started. afscreds.exe will attempt to utilize tickets stored in the MSLSA credentials cache; any existing CCAPI credentials cache; and finally display an Obtain Tokens dialog to the user. When used in combination with IP address change detection, afscreds.exe will attempt to acquire AFS tokens whenever the IP address list changes and the Kerberos KDC is accessible.

The renew drive maps option is used to ensure that the user drive maps constructed via the OpenAFS tools (not NET USE) are re-constructed each time afscreds.exe is started.

By default afscreds.exe is configured by the OpenAFS.org installers to use "-A -N -M -Q" as startup options. Currently, there is no user interface to change this selection after install time although these options may be altered via the registry on either per machine or per user basis. See AfscredsShortcutParams in Appendix A.

Due to conflicts with Vista and Windows 7 User Account Control, the Drive Letter Mount and Advanced tabs of the AFS Authentication Tool were disabled beginning with the 1.5.66 release.