documentation/docs/user-guide/afs_migration.md

AFS Migration

The most up to date documentation regarding the AFS migration project and questions about it you can find here: https://intranet.psi.ch/en/computing/afs-migration

However, in addition, the following topics should give you some ideas on what to do and how to move your data away from AFS.

!!! info If you don't find the necessary information, you are unsure and/or have questions please contact linux-eng@psi.ch!

FAQ

How do I migrate the Files on my AFS home to my personal drive?

You have two options for this:

Linux

Open an SSH connection to login.psi.ch. After login in on this system you will have your personal (U:) drive available in ~/network_drives/home You AFS "home" is available in /afs/psi.ch/user/<first character username>/<username> - e.g. /afs/psi.ch/user/e/ebner

You can now use cp, mv or any other command of your choice to move your files to your personal drive.

Some examples:

# move a folder called "testme" from your AFS home to your personal drive !! replace e/ebner with your user name !!!
mv /afs/psi.ch/user/e/ebner/testme ~/network_drives/home/

# or (this will automatically determine your afs home path)
mv /afs/psi.ch/user/$(id -un | cut -c1)/$(id -un)/testme ~/network_drives/home/

Windows

• Open a RDP Remote desktop to winterm4.psi.ch or login to a Windows system with the AFS client installed.
• Open the Windows Explorer and naviate to your AFS home as well as personal drive. You can now move / copy&paste your files from AFS. To avoid confusion please remove the files on AFS that you already moved!

I have a Linux desktop with AFS (home) - What should I do?

Please open a ServiceNow ticket with the request to switch to local home. This way 1st Level Linux support can schedule a date and time to do the change with you. If you have a dedicated administrator for your system he might do it as well with the guide in the AFS documentation.

Before the switch please move/copy all necessary data from your afs home to your personal drive. More details you can find in the FAQ above.

Personal Drive / AFS "Home" Directory

Every user has a personal drive (the so called U-Drive on Windows). This drive is visible and accessible from all standard Windows systems and most RHEL8/9 Linux systems (depending on their configuration)

Please use your your personal drive instead of the AFS home to hold your personal files.

Do not use the personal drive for checking out and work on Git repositories! Use the local homes instead and use the central Git server (gitea.psi.ch) to synchronize repositories between different systems.

If your personal drive is not visible on your Linux system please contact your administrator or open a Service Now ticket.

Group / Project Drives

Project drives should be migrated to NFS and/or SMB drives depending on the use cases and requirements. If the usage of the drive is exclusively/mainly from Linux request and migrate to a NFS4 network drive. If the drive is used from Windows only or from Windows and Linux migrate to an SMB share.

Drives can be requested via Service Now Incident. For this following information is required:

• responsible
• size
• type of network share (NFS or SMB)
• backup/snapshotting and/or performance requirements
• if (tape-)archiving of the data is required - open an additional Service Now Incident
• make it available via /psi.ch/{group|project}/$SHARE?

We heavily suggest you allow to make your shares available via /psi.ch aka Central Storage Mount (this includes also already existing (CIFS) shares) as this simplifies configuration on the client side. And you get a similar PSI-wide absolute path as you have it now with AFS.

Depending on the performance requirements there are various options on the server side as well as on the client side through local caching.

PModules

On the compute clusters PModules will be available based on a different storage backend. The administrators will inform about upcoming changes.

The availability of PModules on other systems are currently under investigation. PModule, as a command, will probably also be available but it is not clear yet whether central modules and which modules will be provided. This heavily depends on finding responsible persons for the software modules and a sustainable maintenance concept.

Despite of whether centrally provided modules will be available you can always have and maintain your own modules on one of your group shares or locally on your system.

There will be alternative solutions to PModules, especially the installation and use of Matlab! More details will follow.

Alternatives

Beside PModules there are alternative modules systems available that might fit your use case:

• Environment Modules: https://github.com/envmodules/modules
• ...

Python / Conda

• Local Python / Virtual Environments: On up-to-date RHEL8/9 Linux systems multiple versions of Python can be installed. Please use the locally installed Python versions instead of the Pythons previously provided via PModules. The same applies to conda.
• pyenv / uv / micromamba / pixi: If the local Python installations are too inflexible there is the option to use tools like pyenv, uv, micromamba or pixi to manage your Python environments.

More details can be found in the Python documentation and the Conda documentation.