Unity Lockers

• Introduction
• Locker fees
• Locker types
  • Project locker
  • Anonymous ftp locker
• Accessing your locker
• Granting access rights to your locker

Introduction

Unity lockers must be used for University business only. For more information about obtaining a locker, read Unity Locker Policies, which contains a link to the online locker application form. Each locker has an owner, who can give other users access to it except in the case of an anonymous ftp locker. Incoming anonymous ftp is not supported on Unity; i.e., users can copy files from an anonymous ftp locker but only its owner can put files into it. To use the file space in your Unity locker, you will need to be familiar with AFS (Andrew File System) and Unix operating system commands. See the Unix workstation Web page or contact the NC State Help Desk.

Locker fees

There are fees for locker setup and renewal as well as a yearly rental fee for each 100 MB of storage space used. For a complete schedule of locker fees, see OIT Service Rates.

Locker types

The two types of Unity lockers (project, anonymous ftp) are described in detail below.

Project locker
A project locker name must contain between 9 and 14 characters, all lower case, and should relate to the name of the project. Most project lockers are used for housing Web pages, but they can contain other types of files as well. However, be careful to put files into appropriate subfolders, as indicated below. This is especially important for Web pages. See the formats and examples below.

All Web pages must be placed in a subfolder named htdocs in the project locker:

• Format for the AFS path to a Web page in the locker:
  /afs/unity/web/initial/projectname/htdocs/filename.html
  where projectname is the name of the locker
  initial is its first letter
  filename is the name of the Web page
  
  
• Format for a URL for a Web page in the locker:
  http://www.ncsu.edu/project/projectname/filename.html
  
  Examples (for a Web page in a locker named cropgrant):
  
  AFS path:
  /afs/unity/web/c/cropgrant/htdocs/webpage1.html
  
  URL:
  http://www.ncsu.edu/project/cropgrant/webpage1.html

Files not intended for Web display can go into other subfolders in the project locker:

• Format for the AFS path for other types of files in the locker:
  /afs/unity/web/initial/projectname/folder/filename
  where projectname is the name of the locker,
  initial is its first letter,
  folder is the name of the desired subfolder,
  filename is the name of the file
  
  Example (for a locker named cropgrant):
  /afs/unity/web/c/cropgrant/stats/current.xls

Anonymous ftp locker
This is also usually named with the owner's Unity ID. The format for its AFS path is as follows:

• AFS path: /afs/unity.ncsu.edu/lockers/ftp/userid/
  
  Example (for Unity user jojones):
  /afs/unity.ncsu.edu/lockers/ftp/jojones/

Accessing your locker

Once you log in to your Unity account, you can access your locker from your home directory by any one of the two methods described below. In each case you will be entering commands at a Unity prompt (unity%). We will continue using the example of a project locker named cropgrant.

• Use the cd command and the locker's full AFS path name.
  For example, you would type:
       cd /afs/unity/web/c/cropgrant
  
  
• Create a symbolic link in your home directory.
  To do this, you'll need to use the locker's full path name (obtainable with the attach command as shown above) and the ln (link) command. For example, If the full path to the locker were /afs/unity/web/c/cropgrant and the name of the symbolic link were crp-online, you would type the following two commands:
       cd (to be sure you're in your home directory)
       ln -s /afs/unity/web/c/cropgrant crp-online
  To use the symbolic link to access your locker from your home directory, you would type:
       cd crp-online
  If you listed the files in your home directory using the command ls -l, you would see your locker on a line similar to this one:
       crp-online---> /afs/unity/web/c/cropgrant

There are advantages and disadvantages to each of these access methods. Contact the NC State Help Desk for further advice and assistance in accessing your locker.

NOTE: If the computer you are working from has only remote access to the Unity computing environment, you will need to use a SSH program to administer, create and edit the files within your Unity locker. SSH to one of these hosts:

• login.ncsu.edu (NC State faculty, staff and graduate student access)
• cc.ncsu.edu (NC State faculty, staff and graduate student access)
• email.ncsu.edu (NC State faculty, staff and all student access)

You will need a file transfer program such as ftp, Fetch or Rapid Filer to transfer files from your desktop computer to AFS file space. Ftp to host ftp.ncsu.edu

Granting access rights to your locker

When you acquire a project locker or a locker for extra user space, it comes with a PTS group that has write access to the locker. You are this group's owner and, initially, its only member. You will have the ability to add or remove other members. For the commands you'll need to do this, see the page on PTS Groups.

Additional information

• For help with Unity Lockers, contact a computing consultant at the NC State Help Desk.
• For College of Engineering lockers, see http://www.eos.ncsu.edu/lockers/

Content updated October 31, 2006 by twk
Page last modified  August 14, 2008 by cawalker