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Using cphome to preserve files from an old account

What does cphome do?

The cphome command allows a student with an OCE-type account to copy her or his entire home directory from one ACMS server to another. (It cannot be used to copy an OCE storage directory for a class to an OCE home directory -- use the cp command for that.)

How do I use cphome?

To use cphome, you can either use the web interface, or use a Secure Shell program (available in the Communications folder on all ACMS macs and PCs) to log in to the account to which you want to move the files.

If you are using cphome through SSH, at the command prompt, type

cphome username@server

where "username" is the login name for the account from which you want to move the files, and "server" is the ACMS machine on which this old account resides.

An example

Let's imagine a student named Alex Cordova has an OCE account, but also has some files in the home directory of a soon-to-expire class account, bw299ax on ieng9. Alex's OCE account name is acordova on iacs5. Alex should log into iacs5 as acordova to run cphome. Once in the OCE account, Alex should type:

cphome bw299ax@ieng9

This will copy all the files and directories from the Alex's bw299ax account on ieng9 to a new directory called 'from.bw299ax.ieng9' in the acordova OCE account on iacs5. All other files in the acordova account will be undisturbed. If there are problems with the transfer, cphome will attempt to correct them, and will offer suggestions if necessary.

I changed my major (or the registrar thinks I did)... now what?

You can also use cphome to transfer files between OCE accounts or from an expiring OCE account to a new personal account. For example, if you changed your major from engineering to cogsci, and just received a new OCE account on icogsci1, you might use something like the following:

cphome myusername@ieng9

You would run this command on icogsci1 to copy your files from ieng9 to your new account on icogsci1.

Caveats and cautionary remarks

Note that cphome won't work if the source and destination accounts are the same. If you tried to move files from and to the same server, you would see an error message:

The filesystems you're copying from/to seem to be the same. The source and destination directories must be different, or cphome will not work.

If you see this, you probably have logged in to the wrong system to run cphome, or you are executing the command with the wrong server name. Re-read the above instructions on how to use cphome carefully.

After you verify that the copy worked, it is a good idea to remove the files from the old account - this will eliminate any confusion caused by working with the old files and protect you against the loss of your work.

Be aware that certain files and user-compiled programs may have hard-coded path information pointing to the directory of the old account. Examples of files which may need attention are: .shosts, .forward, and .elm/elmrc. Note that the .cshrc and .login files from the old account may not be compatible with the new account. User programs might also have to be recompiled to work properly on the new system.

If you have any questions please contact the Account Services Office, by email (acs-consult@ucsd.edu") or phone (858-534-4060).