DFS home folder is reorganized for simplicity

Each user at CERN has three folders created for him/her on central servers: a DFS (Distributed File System) home folder, a Favorites folder and a Desktop folder. At the moment these folders are stored in different physical places on the network. Your home folder, where normally all documents should be stored, is accessible from DFS. The Favorites and Desktop folders are more or less hidden and not easily accessible without browsing "desktop" during your Windows session or "favorites" in Internet Explorer. Users sometimes find this structure confusing, so the IT department's Internet Services group (IT/IS) proposed reorganizing these folders in a more straightforward way.

Fig. 1.

Let's take as an example an account called "rotto". Its folders are going to be reorganized in the following way (figure 1):
• the content of Desktop will be moved to \\cern.ch\dfs\Users\r\rotto\Desktop;
• the content of Favorites will be moved to \\cern.ch\dfs\Users\r\rotto\Favorites;
• the content of \\cern.ch\dfs\Users\r\rotto will be moved to the Documents subfolder with two exceptions:
   – the public folder will stay at the root (for better security on Documents);
   – the www folder will stay at the root;
• two Vista-specific folders, Links and Contacts, will be added.

Schedule

At the end of July the IT/IS group prepared a pilot where users could ask for their folders to be reorganized by visiting a dedicated webpage. No issues were identified during that phase so all new accounts are now created with the new folder structure. The next step will be to do an overnight reorganization of all remaining accounts. This should take place by the end of summer.

How to proceed?

Fig. 2.

If you would like to proactively reorganize your home folder before it is done globally, visit the Check Account Status page. Click the [Reorganize] link, which is located in the Paths section of the page (figure 2), and follow the instructions. The procedure should take about five minutes and requires that you close all applications. Afterwards it is necessary to log off from your computer and log on again.