University Computing Systems

Synchronizing AFS Home Directory to Local Disk

• If a user maintains a local (non-AFS) home directory on their workstation, the user may wish to synchronize their AFS home directory with their local home directory.
• Alternatively, the user may wish to have a recent copy of their AFS home directory available in some arbitrary local directory on their workstation.

The following utility is available for such a purpose :

/usr/ucs/bin/rsync.afs.sh

rsync.afs.sh takes both a SOURCE and a TARGET directory on the command line and uses the rsync program to perform its operations.

Example of Usage :

rsync.afs.sh -s /afs/cad/u/j/j/jjones -t /export/home/jjones

The above command copies AFS home directory (SOURCE) for user jjones to /export/home/jjones (TARGET). After the above has been run for the first time, any subsequent runs will copy only the changes made in the SOURCE to the TARGET since the last time rsync.afs.sh was run.

Note:

• If there are files located in the TARGET directory that do not exist or differ from files in the SOURCE directory, those files in TARGET will be removed or overwritten. To preserve files in the TARGET, files located there that will be removed or overwritten should be copied to another location before running rsync.afs.sh.
• If there may be insufficient local disk space for the copy operation, it is desirable to run rsync.afs.sh with the -c option, which will "Calculate" the amount of disk space needed on the TARGET. The needed space is calculated based on the amount of space occupied by the SOURCE. If there isn’t enough space available on the TARGET, the copy process will not begin. Normally, this option is best used when invoking rsync.afs.sh for the first time to get an idea of how much local disk space will be needed.

rsync.afs.sh -s /afs/cad/u/j/j/jjones -t /export/home/jjones -c

The above will install the above command into the user’s crontab and will run daily at 2:45 am (that time is hard-coded into rsync.afs.sh).

Caveats re: cron

When rsync.afs.sh is invoked through cron, rsync.afs.sh will need to be running with the user’s AFS token in order to read the contents of the user’s AFS home directory. If the user is logged into hi/her workstation, and has their AFS token, rsync.afs.sh will also have that token when it runs, and thus can read the contents of the user's home directory.

However, if the user has logged out of their workstation, or has otherwise lost his/her token, there will be no token available. rsync.afs.sh will detect this situation, and will exit without doing anything.