Filesystems
This section provides information about the various storage areas (filesystems) available on the CSF. Please choose from the menu on the left.
But all users must monitor and manage their own scratch usage – do not simply rely on the scratch-tidy to do it for you!
There is NO backup of the scratch area. If you, or the automatic clean-up, deletes files they are gone forever!
Ensure you copy important results back to your home area or additional research data storage – these areas are backed up. Please read the pages in this section for more information.
Introduction
A file is an aggregation of data, a directory is a type of file that maps names to files. A file system is a structure recording these on storage media (e.g. hard disks). A specific file is identified by a path, a set of delimited names that indicates its location, and a file may be accessible from more than one path. Files consume the resources of a file system (their existence must be recorded and the data must be maintained); thus, the quantity of data that a file system can store is limited by its implementation and media on which it exists.
The above terminology is chosen to match that of Unix (see section 3 of the revised article in which the operating system made its debut).
The implementation of a file system and its technical details are outside the scope of this text. What follows will focus on using those available to systems part of the Computational Shared Facility (CSF) and commands to interrogate them.