This page is out of date

The Student Activity Server has been renamed to the Penn State Student Organizations Web Service and is under new management. These Web pages are out of date and will be removed in the near future. Please read http://www.clubs.psu.edu/info/ for information about the new service.

Information on DFS - Our new file service

• What is new?
• Benefits
• What is different?
• Uploading via SFTP
• Uploading using UNIX Secure Copy (SSH)

To improve our service, we are using a new system which uses your Access Account to authenticate you for updating your web page. See the benefits below.

What is new?

With the migration to DFS, we are now a far cry from the single box webserver we started as in 1996. Your web files are now stored on file servers managed by the CAC, and the Student Activity Server (www.clubs.psu.edu) is simply a web portal of these files from DFS to the web. Since DFS allows us to access it from a multitude of ways, webmasters can use a DFS client on their computer, as well as ftp their files. CAC is testing a product called DFSconnect and another based on Samba that will allow a UNIX machine to act as a DFS proxy for Windows 95 and Macintosh machines. Read more on their DFS-overview page.

Benefits

Your group's files are stored in the Distributed File System managed by the Center for Academic Computing. This provides several benefits that were previously not available:

• Access Accounts are used to control who is allowed to update files. This means you no longer have to remember an additional password for this site, and you are also able to change your password. It also makes the server administrator's jobs easier, because we do not have to assign passwords to users.

• The files will be backed up by CAC, so if a disk failure should occur, your files will still be safe. (NOTE: You should still keep a copy of your group's web site on your own computer, on your U: drive, or some other safe place.)

• Best of all, you can install a DFS client on your own computer and access your club's web site directly from your own machine. There are clients available for several platforms. The Windows NT client is available from https://www.work.psu.edu/access/dce/. Installation instructions are included on that page. Clients for Solaris are available via FTP from ftp://software.cac.psu.edu/pub/dce (you will need to login with your Access Account). Unfortunately, clients are not (yet?) available for Macintosh, Windows 95/98 or Linux.

• You can perform live edits on html and other text files using a Unix text editor if you have an account on the CAC Unix cluster. There are two main labs, one in Hammond (ptph.psu.edu), and one in Osmond (ptpo.psu.edu). You can also benefit from other Unix services such as symbolic links.

• You can now use multiple methods to transfer your files, including Secure FTP (SFTP).

What is different about DFS?

There are a few subtle yet important details you need to know about when web authoring on the clubs server now with DFS.

• You now use your Access Account password (Kerberos) when using sftp. This is the same password you use to check @psu.edu email, your grades on eLion.psu.edu, etc. You can change this password at www.work.psu.edu.

• The DFS file servers and sftp server we are now using are Unix based which are CASE SENSITIVE. That means if your directory is ThisOldGroup, you cannot type "thisoldgroup" to reach it in sftp. You must type the capitals correctly ("cd ThisOldGroup").

• If you no longer want the capitals in your directory name, you can ask us to change it to something easier to type.

• The Web server (www.clubs.psu.edu Stage 3) and auxillery (temporary ASP and CGI processor) web server (Stage 2) are both case insensitive except for Directory Index searches. This means that you can link to any case of your web pages. For instance if you ask for "DEFAULT.HTM" and you only have the file "default.htm" it will give you "default.htm" as if it was "DEFAULT.HTM". However, since the file and sftp servers are case sensitive, they will believe different case spellings are unique files.

• Your clubs directory is no longer located directly off of the root "/" directory in sftp. You now have to descend the /clubs/ directory first. For instance, /sas/ becomes /clubs/sas/.

Transferring Files to Your Website

Visit our tutorials for using Secure FTP, and other upload methods.

Transferring Files to Your Website via Unix Secure Copy (SCP)

You may utilize the Unix Secure Shell (SSH) Secure Copy command to copy files to the CAC Unix cluster if you have an account on that system. To do so (using splogin.cac.psu.edu as an example):

Method one: local scp

1. Log into a local system that has scp1 (scp from ssh version 1) and your files to upload.
2. localsystem$ scp1 localfile xxx111@splogin.cac.psu.edu:/.../dce.psu.edu/fs/services/www/clubs/wwwroot/yourclubdir
   • You can also set a symbolic link in your home directory, which you only need to do once:
     1. localsystem$ ssh1 -l xxx111 splogin.cac.psu.edu
     2. ptph$ ln -s /.../dce.psu.edu/fs/services/www/clubs/wwwroot/yourclubdir yourclubdir
   • Now for each time you upload you will only need to type:
     • localsystem$ scp1 localfile xxx111@splogin.cac.psu.edu:yourclubdir
3. You will no longer need to log into the CAC Unix cluster for each upload. But you still can to perform live updates on the html files using a Unix text editor.
4. Refer to dfs-notes.html for instructions on how use DFS in Unix. NOTE: SAS Groups usually don't have control access.

Method two: scp from ptph

1. Log into the ptph cluster.
2. You no longer need to type: ptph$ dce_login Use your userid (xxx111) as the principle.
3. ptph$ cd /:/services/www/clubs/wwwroot/yourclubdir (replace yourclubdir with your club's directory name)
4. ptph$ scp your-local-system-username@your-local-system:path/to/your/web/files.html .(please notice the dot indicating local directory)

Last modified Thursday, 27-Mar-2003 12:40:12 EST. Student Activity Server Committee