Using AFS

AFS is the common file system for any user registered at Rocquencourt. It is easily shared with other users and there are back-ups. It is highly recommended to use it for developments, rather to have all your information on a “private” disk. At least synchronize your files with your AFS account, e.g. using Unison or rsync (see script below).

See also AFS Howto.

If you have a login dupont and you are at IMARA, then your account is

/afs/inria.fr/rocq/home/imara/dupont

your backup (containing the state of your account the day before) is

/afs/inria.fr/rocq/home/imara/dupont.backup

This is the path if you have an “AFS computer” (installed and maintained by the AFS team). Recommended for Linux users. Otherwise you can access the AFS server:

\\samba-files\dupont\

in the Windows explorer.

A useful link is the “common” directory of IMARA:

/afs/inria.fr/rocq/home/imara/common

or

\\samba-files\imara\common\

in the Windows explorer.

For non-AFS Linux computer, there is a documentation about how to set up a working AFS node.

Under Unix, you may have to get or revoke a token (which is the way of authentifiying you and giving the rights to the appropriate files) using klog (with an optional username if your local username differs from the one you want to acquire an AFS token for), kdestroy, and list the currently held tokens using tokens.

mehani@vision:~$ klog mehani
Password:
mehani@vision:~$ tokens

Tokens held by the Cache Manager:

User's (AFS ID 14037) tokens for afs@inria.fr [Expires Feb  8 12:55]
   --End of list--
mehani@vision:~$ kdestroy
mehani@vision:~$ tokens

Tokens held by the Cache Manager:

   --End of list--
mehani@vision:~$

List the AFS quota for the volume containing file or directory path. If no path is specified, the current directory is used.

fs listquota <path>, fs lq <path>

List the Access Control List for the directory path (or the directory containing path). If no path is specified, the current directory is used.

fs listacl <path>, fs la <path>

Set the Access Control List for the user user on the directory path.

fs setacl <path> user acl, fs sa <path> <user> <acl>

Recursively set the Access Control List for the user user on the directory path and all subdirectories of path.

afs_rseta <path> <user> <acl>

or, since this command is not installed in INRIA's AFS version:

find . -type d -print -exec fs sa {} <user> <acl> \;

Create a group named username:group. username must be your username.

pts creategroup <username:group>

Add user user to group username:group. Usually username is your username.

pts adduser <user> <username:group>

Remove user user from group username:group. Usually username is your username.

pts removeuser <user> <username:group>

List the groups user is a member of.

pts membership <user>

List the members of group username:group.

pts membership <username:group>

List the groups owned by username.

pts listowned <username>

This small script, backup_to_afs.sh, will take care of synchronizing your current home directory to AFS, assuming your local and AFS usernames are the same (and defaulting to mehani is not found in the environment).