How can I easily share files with other users on Athena?

If you want a few people to have access to some of your directories (rather than nobody or everybody), there are a few ways to do it.

Sharing with one or two other individuals

If there are only one or two users that you want to have access to your directories, the best way to do it is to give them access individually. You can do this by typing

where 'directory' is the directory you want to be sharable and 'username' is the username of the person you want to have access. This will let them list and read (as well as copy) any files in your
directory. If you'd like them to be able to insert, change, and delete files as well, then type:

Note that "write" permissions also implies "read", so you don't need to set both explicitly.

When you no longer want your friends to have access to that directory, you can type:

For more information about the "fs" command, please see How do I change permissions in AFS?

There can be no more than 16 entries on the access control list for a given directory. This includes entries like "system:anyuser l" and "system:expunge ld". Note that this limit is the number of entries, not the number of users. If you want to give access to more than a few users, it's best to create a group and use that. See the instructions below for doing that.

Sharing with a group

If there are more than a few users you want to share a directory with, then the best way to do so would be to use a group created by Moira. If you do not have an existing group which you want to use for this purpose, you will need to create one. For more information, see How can I create a group? and How do I administer an Athena (Moira) list or group?.

Once your group is set up the way you want, you can then give the group permission to your directory by typing:

where 'group_name' is the name of the group that you want to share with. If you want the group to be able to insert, write, and delete from the directory as well, replace "read" with "write". As above, you can remove permissions by assigning the group permissions to "none".

You can check to see who has permission to your directory by typing

For more information on fs, type 'fs help'. To get help with a specific fs command, type 'fs help commandname'.