Huxley FAQ

The Huxley FAQ endeavors to answer the most common questions about Huxley, the campus file server.

What is Huxley?

Huxley is the campus file server. It provides students, faculty, and staff with a place to store important files. The advantages of using Huxley are that it is:

Network accessible. Any file you put on Huxley can be accessed from any computer on the planet with an Internet connection. That means that you can work on the same project from any computer lab or office on campus, from home, or from an Internet cafe in Ulaan Baatar.
Centrally located. When you store a file on Huxley, you don't have to worry about what computer you put it on; it's always on Huxley.
Backed up. Huxley is backed up nightly to another computer, and weekly to tapes that are taken off-campus and stored securely, which means that we can recover from serious disasters, or simple mistakes.
Robust. Huxley is actually a cluster of machines, so if one goes down, Huxley stays up. If you store your documents on your personal computer and it goes down, your documents are down, too.

Huxley serves three volumes:

The home drive stores personal documents. You should keep documents on Home that are personal or private. The Home drive also stores personal web pages; everyone has a folder in their Home drive called "publichtml"; anything you put in that folder will be made available on your website. The Home drive is usually the H: drive on PCs.
The misc drive stores documents for departments, offices, or groups. You should keep documents that will need to be shared extensively among your department or office on the Misc drive. The Misc drive is usually the E: or M: drive on PCs.
The webdirs drive stores web pages for departments. It's usually the I: drive on PCs

How do I connect to Huxley on campus?

Please follow the appropriate instructions below to connect to Huxley on campus.

Instructions for Mac OS X

First, click on your desktop so that the word "Finder" appears in bold in the upper lefthand corner. Then pull down the "Go" menu and select "Connect to Server...":

This will bring up a dialog that prompts you to enter a server. For your Home drive, enter smb://huxley/home in "Server Address". Click the plus icon to the right to add it to your list of favorite servers, and click connect:

You'll be prompted to enter your username and password. When you click "OK", your home drive will appear on your desktop. Drag the icon to the righthand side of the dock, next to the trashcan. It will stick there, so that, in the future, you can just click on it to map the drive:

Now, repeat these steps to map the Misc drive. Pull down "Go" and select "Connect to Server...". For Server Address, enter smb://huxley/misc, click "Connect," and enter your login information again. Again, drag the "misc" icon to your dock so that you can easily access it in the future.

If you need to map Webdirs, you can repeat the steps a third time with the Server Address smb://huxley/webdirs.

Instructions for Windows 2000/XP from the residence halls

Begin by opening “My Computer.” Pull down the “Tools” menu and select “Map Network Drive…”.

This will bring up the “Map Network Drive” window. In the “Drive” dropdown menu in this window select H:. In the “Folder” field enter \\huxley\home. Make Sure that the “Reconnect at logon” checkbox is selected:

Then click on the “different user name” link. This will bring up the “Connect As…” window:

In the “User name” field enter your NWU username. In the “Password” field enter your NWU password. Then click “OK” to close the “Connect As…” window. Then click “Finish” to close the “Map Network Drive” window.

Now, repeat the steps to map the Misc drive. Pull down the “Tools” menu and select “Map Network Drive…”. In the “Drive” dropdown menu in this window select M:. In the “Folder” field enter \\huxley\misc. Make Sure that the “Reconnect at logon” checkbox is selected. Then Click on the “different user name” link.

This will bring up the “Connect As…” window. In the “User name” field enter your NWU username. In the “Password” field enter your NWU password. Then click “OK” to close the “Connect As…” window. Then click “Finish” to close the “Map Network Drive” window.

If you need to map Webdirs, you can repeat the steps again with the drive letter I: and the folder \\huxley\webdirs.

Instructions for Windows 2000/XP from elsewhere on campus

Begin by opening “My Computer.” Pull down the “Tools” menu and select “Map Network Drive…”:

This will bring up the “Map Network Drive” window. In the “Drive” dropdown menu in this window select H:. In the “Folder” field enter \\huxley\home. Make sure that the “Reconnect at logon” checkbox is selected:

Then click “OK” to close the “Connect As…” window. Then click “Finish” to close the “Map Network Drive” window.

If you need to map Webdirs, you can repeat the steps again with the drive letter I: and the folder \\huxley\webdirs.

Can I access Huxley from off-campus?

You'll actually use WesMail to get to Huxley from off-campus. Here's how:

Login to WesMail
Click the plus sign next to "Huxley" in the left toolbar
Click on the drive you want to access -- Home, Misc, or Webdirs.

You'll now have a web interface to Huxley. It's not as slick as accessing it on campus, but it'll do.

To edit a file, for instance, click on it to download it to your hard drive, and edit it there. Then, when you're done editing the file, click the "Browse" button in the upload box at the bottom of the page. Find the file you edited, click "Upload File", and you're done!

What is my quota on Huxley?

The following text is taken directly from the Network Storage Policy.

Default Quotas

A network storage quota is composed of two parts: a soft quota and a hard quota. When a user exceeds the soft quota, he or she will start to receive messages that warn him or her of it; a user is not allowed to exceed the hard quota, and any data that is saved in excess of the hard quota will be discarded. Most programs will inform the user that there is insufficient disk space if this happens.

The soft quota for all students will be 1 Gigabyte (Gb); the hard quota for students will be 1.1 Gb. The soft quota for faculty and staff will be 10 Gb, and the hard quota will be 11 Gb.

Quota Extensions

Students will not be granted quota extensions; there will be no exceptions. Employees may be granted a temporary extension to their soft and hard quotas given extraordinary circumstances. These extensions will not be granted for more than two weeks and will be given only at the discretion of the Unix Systems Administrator. The size of the extension will be determined by the same according to the perceived needs of the requestor.

Quota Notification

If a user exceeds his or her soft quota, the system will send him or her weekly emails until the situation is remedied. Most programs will alert the user if, when saving, the hard quota was hit and the data was truncated, but we cannot guarantee that this will happen.
Web Space

Students are granted web space on the NWU student server separate from their network storage. The soft quota for this space is 100 Mb; the hard quota is 110 Mb.

Faculty and staff are granted web space on the NWU web server separate from their network storage. The soft quota for this space is 300 Mb; the hard quota is 330 Mb.

Departments may be granted web space on the NWU web server upon request. There is no quota for this space; however, it should not be used for personal websites.

Is Huxley backed up?

Yes. All of the documents stored on Huxley are backed up nightly. Backups are kept for at least six weeks.

Can I access Huxley via FTP or SFTP?

No. For security reasons, we do not allow access to Huxley except by mapping the drives on-campus or via Wesmail off-campus.

How can I restore a document from last night's backup of Huxley?

You can now do restore most documents on Huxley from backups yourself!

If you need to restore a document from your Home drive, first go into your Home and look for the folder called "snapshots." Go into that folder, and you'll find a perfect "snapshot" of what your Home drive looked like last night at midnight. You can just drag the document(s) you need to restore from "snapshots" back into your Home drive.

If you need to restore a document from Misc or Webdirs, you'll find a "snapshots" folder in the root of those drive. Inside that, there's a perfect snapshot of the drive last night at midnight. You can again just drag-and-drop files from the snapshot back to the real version.

The snapshots are all read-only, so you don't have to worry about blowing away backed up data. And they have the same access controls as the "real" drives, so you don't have to worry about snoopers, either.

If you need to restore a file from a backup older than one day, please submit a ticket.

How do I put an academic department or office website on Huxley?

First, you'll need to access the Webdirs drive of Huxley. Webdirs is structured like the Misc drive, so there are folders for departments, offices, etc. Find your folder, and simply copy your website documents into it. Your site will be live immediately!

See the Web Development FAQ for more information.

How do I put my personal webpage on Huxley?

Create and save your page using a program of your choosing (e.g. Dreamweaver, Frontpage, BBEdit, Emacs, Notepad, etc). Ensure that you have a file called "index.html", "index.htm", or "index.php". This will be the page people are automatically taken to when they visit your site.
Access your huxley Home (H:) account.
Copy the web page files you saved into the folder called "publichtml".

The content you placed in your publichtml folder will be immediately available on your website. For students, your website will be http://students.nebrwesleyan.edu/students/username; for faculty/staff, it will be http://www.nebrwesleyan.edu/people/username. If you do not have an "index.html", "index.htm", or "index.php" page in your publichtml folder itself (not in a subfolder), your site will not work. If you are a student and this is a new site, it will take a few hours for it to get listed on the student directory page (http://students.nebrwesleyan.edu/students.php). You must have a page called "index.html", "index.htm", or "index.php", or your site will not be listed. Obviously, content on your web page must obey the guidelines and regulations set forth in the "Policy on Appropriate Use on Computer Resources" and the "Policies for Nebraska Wesleyan's Presence on the World Wide Web". Students must also adhere to the policies in the 'General Student Policies and Procedures' and 'Code of Student Conduct' documents, which can be found in the front of your student planner. See the Web Development FAQ for more information.