Your AFS partition is the directory where your personal files are stored when you use the OIT computer labs or the gl.umbc.edu login nodes. The UMBC-wide /afs can be accessed on HPC via the /afs directory. Your AFS partition is in /afs/umbc.edu/u/s/username where username is your username, u is the first letter of your username and s is the second letter. Your /afs/umbc.edu/u/s/username/pub directory is where you store files visible to other users, such as your umbc webpage in pub/www/. Your /afs/umbc.edu/u/s/username/home directory is your AFS home directory.

In order to access AFS, you need an AFS token. One is given to you when you log in, but it expires a few hours after you log in. You can see whether you currently have an AFS token by running the tokens command:

straha1@hpc:~> tokens

Tokens held by the Cache Manager:

Tokens for afs@umbc.edu [Expires Oct 25 00:16]
   --End of list--

The "Tokens for afs@umbc.edu" line tells me that I currently have tokens that let me access UMBC's AFS storage. The expiration date ("Expires Oct 25 00:16") tells me when my tokens will expire. When your tokens expire, you will get this message:

straha1@hpc:~> tokens

Tokens held by the Cache Manager:

   --End of list--

Notice the lack of the "Tokens for afs@umbc.edu" line. Once your tokens expire, you have to get new ones in order to access AFS again. To do that, use the aklog command:

straha1@hpc:~> aklog
straha1@hpc:~> tokens

Tokens held by the Cache Manager:

Tokens for afs@umbc.edu [Expires Oct 25 00:28]
   --End of list--