To develop the best understanding of the overall scope of an installation procedure, read through the entire chapter or section that describes it before performing any actions.
In addition, familiarity with some basic AFS concepts can make the installation more efficient, because you understand better the purpose of the steps. The following is a prioritized list of material to read before installing the first AFS machine. At minimum, read the first chapter of the OpenAFS Administration Guide. Then continue your reading in the indicated order, as extensively as you can. It is more important at this point to read the conceptual material in each section than the instructions.
Selected Topics in the OpenAFS Administration Guide
The chapter titled An Overview of AFS Administration
Selected sections in the Administering Server Machines chapter: Local Disk Files on a Server Machine, The Four Roles for a Server Machine, Maintaining the Server CellServDB File
Selected sections in the Monitoring and Controlling Server Processes chapter: Controlling and Checking Process Status
Selected sections in the Managing Server Encryption Keys chapter: About Server Encryption Keys
Selected sections in the Managing Volumes chapter: About Volumes, Creating Read/write Volumes, Clones and Cloning, Mounting Volumes
Selected sections in the Administering Client Machines and the Cache Manager chapter: Overview of Cache Manager Customization, Configuration and Cache-related Files on the Local Disk, Determining the Cache Type, Size, and Location
Selected sections in the Managing Access Control Lists chapter: Protecting Data in AFS
More Selected Topics in the OpenAFS Administration Guide
Selected sections in the Managing Volumes chapter: Creating and Releasing Read-only Volumes (Replication), Creating Backup Volumes
Selected sections in the Administering the Protection Database chapter: About the Protection Database
Selected sections in the Administering User Accounts chapter: The Components of an AFS User Account
Selected sections in the Managing Administrative Privilege chapter: An Overview of Administrative Privilege