AFS

AFS stands for Andrew File System and is a distributed file system that was invented at CMU. You have a quota of space and a home directory where you can put your files. You can access these files from any Andrew Unix server or cluster computer on campus.

When you’re using AFS, there’s a system of permissions (called access control lists, or ACLs) regulating who can access your files and what they can do to them. It’s important to know about how to use this system so that you can stop other people from getting access to your homework or other private files.

AFS is set up so that by default, you have a private directory where you can do your work: ~/private. If you don’t change its permissions, you can put all of your work for your classes in there and no one will be able to access it except for you.

By default, AFS also has a ~/public directory, where you can put things that you want other people to be able to see. Other users will be able to read files that you put there (and make copies of them), but not change them, delete them, or add their own files.

ACLs (fs)

You don’t need to memorize this information! It’s listed here solely for your reference.

It’s important to be able to control who can access your files on AFS, and there’s a command called fs that lets you do this.

For more information on any of the following commands, you can always run fs help <command> to get help on that fs subcommand.

Listing Permissions (fs la)

You can use fs la (or fs listacl) to see what the permissions on a directory are. The output will be an AndrewID or group followed by what they are allowed to do. For example:

jzimmerm@unix4:~$ fs la
Access list for . is
Normal rights:
  system:anyuser l
  jzimmerm rlidwka

There are several permissions that a user can have for a given directory:

Setting Permissions (fs sa)

You can use fs sa (or fs setacl) to change the permissions on a directory. The syntax is:

fs sa <directory> <user ><permissions>

where is some of the letters rlidwk or "none". For instance, to let the user bovik list, read, edit, create, lock, and delete files in the directory foo, you'd do:

fs sa foo bovik rlidwk

AFS Quota (fs lq)

You can use fs lq (or fs listquota) to see how much of your alloted AFS space you’re using. For example:

jzimmerm@unix14:~$ fs lq
Volume Name                    Quota       Used %Used   Partition
user.jzimmerm                2000000     385982   19%         46%

Recovering Lost Files

CMU’s AFS has a feature called OldFiles that keeps track of a snapshot of your home folder from the previous day.

Look for it in ~/OldFiles. This is a read-only nightly snapshot of your files that you can use to copy files you accidentally deleted back to where they should be. You can cp files out of it.

If ~/OldFiles is missing, there is probably still hope! Run the following commands (substitute your AndrewID for ANDREW_ID_HERE):

$ cd ~
$ fs mkmount OldFiles user.ANDREW_ID_HERE.backup

Now you can look in ~/OldFiles to find your backed up files.

Caution: OldFiles only backs up your files once a day, so you could still lose up to a day of work if you need to restore from OldFiles. Also, OldFiles is a feature of Andrew Unix systems and most machines do not have such a system. Be careful when using rm and other destructive commands.