newbie, afs file path question

[Harald Barth]

> What's going on?

Everything is working as designed :-) I guess your AFS cell is
named jpl.nasa.gov. 

On the HP, the volume that is containing the mount points for the
different cells is fetched from one of your file servers and there
your sysadmin has decided to name the mount point for the jpl.nasa.gov
cell just jpl.

On the Mac, the Arla feature named dynamic root is default. This works
as follows: The /afs/ catalog is not a real catalog but constructed
from the database with the names of all cells. So your cell appears
with its cell name instead of the mount point name. This feature is
needed because on the Mac you have the finder to look at all the
files. The finder is very keen in looking at all the directories in
/afs/ which often takes a long time if there are cells mounted in /afs
which do not respond quickly and the finder locks up during that time.

You can change the behaviour of Arla on the Mac to follow that on your
HP, but we do not recommend it because you will be waiting for your
finder.

Harald.