Your home directory at SEAS is common to all lab machines, the Unix shell server and the SEAS compute grid. This means that you can place your files for easy access from any of the system you might login through. You can also use the ssh/sftp/scp tools to copy your data off to remote systems. See Unix Shell access for details on this.
Your home directory is deigned to automatically manager the amount of space each user can use at one time. The current quota setting is 3GB by default; faculty may have more. We expect to increase this in the near future. If you exceed your quota, the file will not be written, and you will receive an email in your gwu.edu account. You will need to delete files in order to bring you account back under the limit in order to be able to write any new data.
Currently, SEASCF only provides protection for files on network drives. There is no means available to restore files deleted or damaged on individual desktops. SEAS uses sets of “snapshots” which are read‑only copies of all of the data in your home directory. The frequency and number of copies depends on what shared drive holds the data. For all home directories a snapshot is taken once a day (early in the morning), and kept for two weeks. If you create a file, and delete it before the next morning's snapshot is taken, it is permanently lost.
The procedure varies with the system you are logged onto, Microsoft Windows, Macintosh OS X, or Solaris Unix.
Open My Computer
Double click to open the T: drive, or if not mounted yet, use Tools → Map Network Drive… drive to map \\titan\Homes\username as T:.
In order to access the snapshots you need to either type the path, or enable viewing of hidden files. Either …
…select Tools, Folder Options… → select the View tab; select Show hidden files and folders; click Ok. (This method does not work if you “Explore” the drive, you need to use “Open”.)
…type into the address bar “T:\~snapshot”; press enter. (For quick access to the latest snapshot type “T:\~snapshot\.latest”; press enter.)
You can now select and copy files by moving through the sub‑directories. You will find that the sub‑directories are complete copies of the drives. Note that the files in the snapshot directories cannot be deleted by anyone, even administrators – they will naturally expire.
Click the Desktop background. The Finder menu is displayed.
From the menu bar, select Go -> choose Go to Folder…
Type in ~/~snapshot; click Ok. (For quick access to the latest snapshot type ~/~snapshot/.latest; click Ok.)
You can now select and copy files by moving through the sub‑directories. You will find that the sub‑directories are complete copies of the Home folder. Note that the files in the snapshot directory cannot be deleted by anyone, even administrators – they will naturally expire.
Open a shell, or ssh to hobbes.seas.gwu.edu, or if already logged in switch to your home directory: cd ↵
Change into the .snapshot directory.: cd .snapshot ↵ (for quick access to the latest snapshot use cd .snapshot/.latest ↵)
You may use the cp command to copy files out as needed. Note “mv” will fail. You will find that the sub‑directories are complete copies of the drives. The files in the snapshot directories cannot be deleted by anyone, even administrators – they will naturally expire.
Other shares work in much the same manner. You can always go to the top of the share, and move into the ~snapshot (.snapshot) directory.
The snapshot directories are in fact virtual, and appear in every directory on the network volume. In order to restore a file in a given directory, you need only move into the .snapshot (~snapshot) sub‑directory within.
The .latest snapshot is never listed, and is in fact also virtual. It will always bee the last snapshot taken.