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New User Information: Using AFS to Manage Your Files

The information provided here is intended solely for internal use by the users of the Scalable Computing Laboratory. If you have any questions or problems, please contact help@scl.ameslab.gov

Background:

Keeping files and programs backed up on a regular basis is very important at the SCL, as previous files and folders that you have used and made may become useful in the future. To ensure the safety of your files, we use a secure, backed-up networking file system called the Andrew File System, also known as AFS. This file system requires little setup, but allows users the security of a local file system with the use of access control lists, and the ease of use similar to a local hard disk. Since our data is continuously archived, and the afs server runs redundant disk arrays, you will always have access to your data, making our AFS storage space a very useful tool.

To set up your AFS space, please look at the software section of this website for instructions dealing with your particular operating system. If your operating system is not mentioned on this list, please send an email to the help desk for instructions on setting this up.

If AFS has already been set up on your computer, you can access it quite easily by opening up a terminal and typing ls. your home directory should be automatically set to your AFS space, which generally resides in the location /afs/scl/user/your username here. to see how much storage space you have, you can type fs listquota, which shows how much space you're using, the amount free, and some other statistics as well. Adding, deleting, and modifying information in this AFS space is done in the same way you would on a local hard disk.

AFS is based off of a token system, in which you are allowed to access your disk space if you have valid AFS tokens. If your computer is left on for an extended period of time, you will need to get AFS tokens again, and you will also need kerberos tickets as well. To get these things, you can enter the following:

kinit (your username here)
aklog

To see if you have AFS tokens, you can simply type tokens at the command prompt. If you are interested in your current kerberos tickets, you can type klist at the prompt, and you will get a list of kerberos tickets.

If you are having problems with these instructions, or you need more information regarding networked storage space, please contact the help desk.