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AFS and filesystems

In Informatics we use AFS for most file storage. It's authenticated (via kerberos) with load balancing, local caching, and global access. (Historical note: this document describes why we chose AFS.)

If you're in a hurry read AFS top tips.

If not, the OpenAFS Documentation pages give a general introduction. See also the slides from the AFS Basics talk.

For help with access permissions (and remember that this is a global filesystem), take a look at Setting ACLs. For other command information, see the local copy of the Official AFS Reference Manual, and also the OpenAFS User Guide.

Each area of AFS filespace - including yours - has a limit to how big it can grow, described on the disk quotas page.

You can access AFS from your own device:

We are unaware of any means of accessing AFS fro your mobile devices, other than the web interface described below. A client (iYSF) was available for iOS but seems to have been removed from the App Store.

You can also serve web pages from AFS using sweb.

Other filesystems

Although AFS is used for DICE home directories and the majority of data space, desktop machines also have local disk.

If you need to get access to files on a remote machine, but the filespace on that machine isn't normally visible from your machine, you can often access it using sshfs.

Last reviewed: 
13/04/2023

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