If you use a FarmShare machine, your home directory is in AFS, not on the machine you happen to be logged into. AFS thinks of network-accessible disk space as a collection of volumes, which are contained, easy to manage, quota controlled chunks of data. It doesn't matter what AFS server your volume is on--regardless of where it is physically located, your volume will appear in a consistent place in the AFS file hierarchy. For user volumes at Stanford, that place is:
/afs/ir/users/u/s/username
Where "u" and "s" are the first two letters of your login sunetid "username". For example, /afs/ir/users/j/o/jonpilat.
Understanding Login Errors
Very occasionally, the either the hardware your AFS volume is located on fails, or the machine you are trying to access AFS from can't see the file system. Below are some diagnostics to tell which of these conditions have occurred. Neither of them means that your data has been lost, as in the worst case, your volume is backed up every night.
- Symptoms
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Regardless of whether you can't access AFS because the machine you are using can't see it, or because the AFS server your user volume is on is down, you'll probably get the same message. You'll get a note on login that your directory "/afs/ir/users/u/s/username" could not be found, and the system is logging you in with a home directory of "/". You can't get to your files or your e-mail if this happens. However, it does not mean that your account has been deleted or that your files are permanently lost.
- Determining if Your Server is Down
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The first thing you should do is try to access your user volume from a different machine. If you can get to your volume from a different machine, please file a HelpSU ticket saying that there's a problem with the AFS client on the machine you first tried to log into.
If you still can't get in, your AFS server may be having problems. The first thing you should do is figure out what AFS server you're on. Use this command:
vos examine user.<username>
The last line of what's returned will look like:
server afssvr18.Stanford.EDU partition /vicepb RW Site
Which means, in this case, that your user volume would be on "afssvr18". To find out if any servers are down, type:
/usr/pubsw/bin/fs checkservers
If everything is running normally, you will get back the message "All servers are running." Otherwise, you should get a list of which servers are currently unreachable by the machine you've logged into.
Please file a HelpSU ticket with all of this information.
