Migrating an AFS home directory to DartFS

Background

New home directories for Research Computing servers are in DartFS.  When you have a DartFS home directory you can login to all of our systems (Discovery, Polaris, Andes, etc.) using your NetID and you have the same home directory everywhere.  This document describes how to move data from an old home directory (i.e. one that you logged into with a username that is not your NetID) to DartFS. 

Step by step

  1. Request a DartFS home at https://rcweb.dartmouth.edu/accounts.
  2. Wait for an email confirming that the new home is ready.  Be sure to check your Junk folder as well.  DartFS accounts are usually provisioned within 48 hours.
  3. Make sure you know your old username and password.  Email research.computing@dartmouth.edu if you need your password reset.
  4. Find a few hours when you won't be running jobs on Polaris/Andes.  You want to be sure that your legacy home is quiescent so that everything copies correctly.
  5. Login to polaris or andes using your *old* username.
    • ssh username@polaris.dartmouth.edu
  6. Run the migrate_home script.  The script will prompt you for your NetID and password and then copy everything from your legacy home directory to the AFS_home folder in your DartFS home.
    • migrate_home
  7. Logout and wait for an email announcing the copy has completed.  Again, check your Junk folder if you don't see it within a few hours.
  8. Make sure everything looks good with the copy.  You should pay particular attention if the email says there were problems.  Those will be logged in a file that begins with rsync_AFS_home... and ends with .error
    • ssh netid@polaris.dartmouth.edu
    • cat rsync_AFS_home*.error

Troubleshooting

By default, DartFS homes are private to you.  If you had colleagues who accessed data from your legacy home directory then that sharing will have to be reimplemented in DartFS.  We can help with that.

Very few errors are fatal to the copy process.   For the most part the script will copy everything it can skipping (and recording to the error log) files that it cannot copy for whatever reason.  If you have errors, we can help with these too.  The classic example.

  • If you have files in your home directory that are not readable by you then those obviously cannot be copied.
  • So called "sparse" files can expand greatly when copied.  On rare occasions this might mean the destination ends up not having enough space for the copy.

Web sites

If you have a public_html directory to deliver web content via rcweb.dartmouth.edu, additional steps are needed to copy your files to DartFS.  Contact us to request creation of a new public_html directory (needed to get permissions correct), and then you can copy content from your old directory.  Just moving your old public_html into your new home directory will not work.

Email us at research.computing@dartmouth.edu with any questions or problems.

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