Personal Web Sites for Faculty, Staff and Students

All students, faculty, and staff can get web space under the college vhost, http://people.engr.ncsu.edu. These particular sites have a common setup across users, which inclues the following:

• Site owner, the individual who owns the site, identified by Unity ID.
• Two directories (folders) automatically created in the locker: www for holding content delivered to the web (/afs/eos/lockers/people/a-z/unityid/www/), and private with no web access (/afs/eos/lockers/people/a-z/unityid/private/).
• Short URL, serving content from the www folder to  http://people.engr.ncsu.edu/unityid/.
• Restricted access to single user. No access to others can be granted.

Summary Procedure for Requesting a Personal Locker

You will receive email when your locker is created with the following information:

• URL: people.engr.ncsu.edu/unityid/, e.g., http://people.engr.ncsu.edu/mcdaniel/
• Path: /afs/eos/lockers/people/[a-z]/[unityid], e.g., /afs/eos/lockers/people/m/mcdaniel/

To make locker updates and changes, use the LOCKER PORTAL

Locker Owner: Who Can Request a Personal Locker

College of Engineering faculty, staff, and students can request and own personal lockers (AKA "people" lockers).

Web Locker: Container for Content

Your people locker contains two folders, www and private. They look like any other directory or folder in AFS. However, each is actually an independent AFS volume with its own quota and permission settings. Because each volume is self-contained, its quota or settings can be changed without affecting other lockers and folders around it.

The first part of the path, /afs/eos/lockers/people/, is the same for everyone who has a personal locker. After that point, the path diverges to folders labeled a through z, then into individual lockers, and then into www or private.

Path to the private volume in an individual's personal locker:
/afs/eos/lockers/people/[a-z]/[unityid]/private/
e.g.,
/afs/eos/lockers/people/m/mcdaniel/private/

Path to the www volume in an individual's personal locker:
/afs/eos/lockers/people/[a-z]/[unityid]/www/
e.g.,
/afs/eos/lockers/people/m/mcdaniel/www/

Corresponding URL for www volume in an individual's personal locker:
http://people.engr.ncsu.edu/unityid/
e.g.,
http://people.engr.ncsu.edu/mcdaniel

URL: Your Personal Web Address

Most people want web sites with short URLs, which are easy to remember and publish. The web locker model that the college uses makes it possible for sites to have short web addresses. Only one URL per site is supported!

The URL is constructed from the name of the personal locker (unityid) and the vhost it is under (people.engr.ncsu.edu), or people.engr.ncsu.edu/unityid/. Content is actually being pulled from the www folder under unityid, but the shortened URL is set up not to display that.

All people with Unity IDs can also set up their Unity space to deliver web content  from www4.ncsu.edu/~unityid. However, personal lockers give engineering users an additional web site affiliated with the college, plus additional quota.

Permissions: Who Can Access Your Personal Locker

In short, only you.

The owner's Unity ID is placed on the access control list (ACL) of his or her personal locker (the other groups are for system administrators and server access). A typical access control list (ACL) for a personal locker looks like the one below for mcdaniel. The locker-specific path and owner are in bold. No additional permission groups are created for personal lockers, as they are for other lockers you may have.

/afs/eos/lockers/people/m/mcdaniel/ % fs la
Access list for . is
Normal rights:
itecs-admin:lockeraudit rl
system:administrators rlidwka
mcdaniel rl

/afs/eos/lockers/people/m/mcdaniel/private/ % fs la
Access list for . is
Normal rights:
itecs-admin:lockeraudit rl
system:administrators rlidwka
mcdaniel rlidwka

/afs/eos/lockers/people/m/mcdaniel/www/ % fs la
Access list for . is
Normal rights:
itecs-admin:lockeraudit rl
engr:www-servers rl
system:administrators rlidwka
mcdaniel rlidwk

Only the owner is listed by UnityID on the ACL. In personal lockers, "a" rights (rlidwka) are granted in private but not in www. As a result, if you want to set up a web site in your www space, you will need to do it yourself. You cannot grant someone access to help you build it.

However, you can grant access to others in your private space, but you should be careful doing this. Rather, create a folder to hold files you want to share, and set access to that folder alone, not to your root private space.