This is the chapter of the MemberManual that describes how to transfer files to your home directory, which is kept in an AFS volume.
Quotas
Make sure you are aware that your home directory and your ~/Maildir directory each reside on their own volume, and each has a separate quota. If you are logged into an HCoop machine, quotadisplay will display your used space and quota for all of your volumes.
Before copying files over, be sure that you have enough disk space in your quota using fs listquota ~/.
This will give you the name of your volume, available space (in KB), used space (in KB), the percentage of your volume used, and the percent of space used on AFS by all HCoop volumes.
If you need more space, please file a quota change request using the portal.
Using rsync
rsync, coupled with the ssh "shell", is capable of providing file transfers to our servers. rsync is a great way to intelligently synchronize files between computer systems.
Here is an example. It copies the contents of ~/Maildir from a different server to ssh.hcoop.net, assuming that it is run from the other server. It will overwrite any existing files in your HCoop AFS space which are also present on the local machine, but it will not delete files that have disappeared.
rsync -azr -e ssh --no-g --progress --verbose ~/Maildir/ ssh.hcoop.net:Maildir/
Note the --no-g switch. This is important: AFS has no need for groups, since it has ACLs, and will reject attempts to change the group permission by non-admin users.
Be very careful to include the trailing slash on both the source and destination paths. rsync is very picky about that.
rsync has many different options available -- consult its man page for further details.
Using scp and sftp
If you are interested in transferring a file or directory just once, then rsync may not be what you want -- scp and sftp are better at transferring individual files or directories. They will not intelligently merge two directory trees like rsync does. See the scp and sftp subpage to learn how these tools may be utilized.
Using ftp
With SSL-enabled FTP, you may transfer files to the hcoop.net host on the standard port (21). On Unix, installing the ftp-ssl package should suffice. For Windows users, we recommend FileZilla. We do not enable normal (non-SSL) FTP, because it sends login credentials in the clear.
At the moment, you need to explicitly request the ability to use FTP, in order for it to work.
Mounting AFS on your local system
See the OpenAFS subpage to learn how to install the right client software so that you can manage files, edit files, and more, from the comfort of your own machine.
If you're not familiar with OpenAFS, it is a cross-platform software package that allows you to access and manipulate files remotely using most any software installed on your machine. AFS allows remote filesystems to be mounted as if they are local. Because of this, it is now possible that you will never need to start an ssh session just to manipulate files.