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The Home Directory

In the Macintosh Finder window, there is a Home directory icon labeled with your userID.

The Home directory is on the local machine and contains local folders (Desktop and Documents) shortcuts to the Library (roaming profiles data) and the userID Server Docs (Documents, Pictures and Music) folders.



Many applications will save your files on the local machine by default. We RECOMMEND that you save your files locally while working on them. Then, copy the files to your Server Docs folder, MyAFS space or removable media BEFORE you logout.

Important Note! If you save your files anywhere in your Home directory other than your Server Docs or MyAFS folder, the files will be deleted when you log off the computer. To access your files from any Windows or Macintosh cluster computer, place them in the Server Docs folder labeled with your userID.

File Maintenance Tips

The following are some tips for effective file maintenance on cluster Macintosh machines:

  • We recommend that you save your files locally while working on them. Then, copy the files to your Server Docs folder, MyAFS space or removable media BEFORE you logout. For more information, read An Overview of Files and Directories in AFS. As always, it is important to save your work frequently.

  • Files in AFS are available via SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol). Use Fetch to download files from your AFS directory to Macs where OpenAFS is not installed or use SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol) to download them to a Windows machine.

  • Each Carnegie Mellon student, faculty and staff member is allocated up to 1 GB of storage for files (AFS space). From the Computing tab of the Carnegie Mellon Web Portal, you can use the Quota Increase Tool to increase your allocated AFS directory space. Although you have the option to increase your AFS quotas, space is still limited and should not be abused. It is important for you to manage the information that is saved in your AFS disk space. See the Increasing and Managing your AFS and Cyrus Quotas document for tips on managing your AFS space.
Last Updated: 5/21/09