AFS Course Disk Space

Reviewed by John Sopko 4/27/2012

The department provides course related AFS disk space for professors teaching courses.  The courses disk space is located in AFS file space.  The UNIX directory path name is /afs/cs.unc.edu/project/courses.  You can access this data area via any Linux system in the department or by using the AFS client software on your Windows computer.  Students can then access the courses disk space from any of the department's computers.

You can place web documents and files in your courses directory.  Instructors can request a web link be placed on the department's http://www.cs.unc.edu/Courses page that links to their course directory space.  In addition, you can keep an archive of course related materials in the /afs/cs.unc.edu/courses/materials directory.  Read below for more information.

Requesting Disk Space and Directory Naming Convention

To obtain disk space for your course please email help@cs.unc.edu requesting course disk space.  Please provide the course number, which determines the name of your subdirectory.  Directories use the convention "comp###-syr".  For example:

/afs/cs.unc.edu/project/courses/comp585-s11

This would be for comp 101 spring semester 2011.  Where there are multiple sections of the same course in a semester, the section number is included like this:

/afs/cs.unc.edu/project/courses/comp590-090-s11

This is for section 090 of Comp 590.  You will get full AFS permissions on the directory for the course you are teaching.  Directories have an initial disk quota of 500 megabytes, but this can be increased if necessary.  Please indicate if you will need more then 500 megabytes of space.

About AFS

You will need to know something about AFS permissions.  The AFS Users Guide is a good place to learn about AFS ACL's (Access Control Lists).  You will be given full access to your courses directory.  Your directory will also have read/list access from any machine in the department.  You can then create AFS groups, add users to those groups, and give permissions to those groups on your courses directory and subdirectories.  For instance, you can create a group for your Teaching Assistants and give them full access rights to your courses directory.  You can create a student group, add your students to this group, and give the group permissions on subdirectories.

Courses web pages

You can create a sub-directory in your courses directory in which to store the course's web info.  You can use any directory name you like, but "public_html" is a standard directory name that is often used.  Create a sub-directory in your courses directory, then send email to pubs@cs.unc.edu and request a link be made to your courses directory from the department's Courses page.

The directory must have read/list AFS privileges in order for the web server to be able to access your pages.  The following AFS command will give your directory access so that any machine in the department including the web server can read your courses web directory:

/usr/afsws/bin/fs sa dir_name cs-machines rl

Where dir_name is the directory you wish to set access on.  See the Department's Web Server FAQ for more info on the department's web server.  Email help@cs.unc.edu if you need assistance with setting up your courses web space.

Disk Space Management

There are 64 gigabytes allocated for the entire courses directory.  You can view how much space is available in the courses AFS partitions by executing the UNIX command "fs df /afs/unc/proj/courses".  We request that you periodically review your data in the courses directory and remove any data that is no longer needed.  If you are done with your top level courses directory please email help@cs.unc.edu requesting that the directory be removed.