Your Home Directory

What is the Home Directory?

The home directory is server storage space provided by ONID for anyone with an ONID account. Here you will find 2GB of space, to be used for anything from hosting a website to saving a paper to so you can print it from the Library.

In the public_html folder, any files listed will be viewable publicly at people.oregonstate.edu/~<username> (where <username> is your ONID username). This is where you can place and maintain a website, or a more powerful application.

The other folder available, <username>, is a storage folder that can't be viewed by others, and is a good storage location for anything you want to be able to access from anywhere, but don't necessarily want others to be able to access/view.

How do I connect to my Home Directory?

First, select the option below which best describes where you are located:

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Windows (On Campus)

If your Windows computer is on the OSU network (either plugged into a network port at a building on campus, using the OSU wireless network, or using VPN? from off-campus), you can mount your ONID home directory to your Windows computer. Follow these steps:

Note: These steps only work on Windows 2000 or Windows XP. If you have an older version of Windows, use the alternative instructions instead.

  1. Click on the Start menu and choose Run.
  2. In the Open: field, enter "\\onid-fs\username", where "username" is your ONID username (for example, smithj).
  3. Click OK.
  4. If Windows asks for a username to use, enter "ONID\username", where "username" is your ONID username. Enter your ONID password.
  5. You should now see a window with your ONID files appear.

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Windows (Off Campus/Alternative)

If your Windows computer is not on the OSU network, or the On Campus instructions do not work for you, you can use any SSH?-based secure file copy program. We recommend WinSCP to securely transfer files between your computer and your ONID account.

WinSCP is available at http://winscp.net/eng/download.php

Follow these steps to connect to your ONID account using WinSCP:

  1. Start WinSCP
  2. Go to the Session page
  3. "Host name" should be set to shell.onid.oregonstate.edu
  4. "Username" should be your ONID username
  5. "Password" should be your ONID password
  6. Click Login to connect
  7. If you are asked "Continue connecting and add host key to the cache?", click Yes

On the left side, you will see the files and directories on your computer. On the right side are the files and directories on your ONID account.

To transfer a file or directory from your ONID account to your computer, simply drag-and-drop the item from the right side to the left side. To transfer a file from your computer to your ONID account, drag-and-drop the item from the left side to the right side.

To close your connection and exit WinSCP, click on the Commands menu and choose Quit.

 

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Mac OS X (On Campus)

If your Mac OS X computer is on the OSU network (either plugged into a network port at a building on campus, using the OSU wireless network, or using VPN from off-campus), you can mount your ONID home directory to your Mac OS X computer. Follow these steps:

  1. From the Finder, click on the Go menu and choose Connect To Server.
  2. In the Address field, enter "smb://onid-fs.onid.oregonstate.edu" and click the Connect button.
  3. Enter your ONID username and password. Click Connect.
  4. Choose "home" from the list of shares and click OK.
  5. Your home directory will be a drive on your desktop.

 

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Mac (Off Campus/Alternative)

If your Mac computer is not on the OSU network, or the On Campus instructions do not work for you, you can use any SSH-based secure file copy program. We recommend Cyberduck to securely transfer files between your computer and your ONID account.

Using Cyberduck to transfer files

Cyberduck is available at http://cyberduck.ch/

Connect to your account using Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP):

  1. Start Cyberduck
  2. Click on Open Connection
  3. Choose "SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol)" from the Protocol: drop-down list
  4. Server: should be set to "shell.onid.oregonstate.edu"
  5. Username: should be your ONID username
  6. Password: should be your ONID password
  7. Click the Connect button
  8. If you get a pop-up window saying "Unknown host key for shell.onid.oregonstate.edu", click the Always button

You will see a listing of files and directories from your ONID home directory. To transfer a file or directory, simply drag-and-drop the item to or from your Mac.

To close your connection, click the Disconnect button.

Protect Web Directories

How to Protect Your ONID Web Directories

  1. Create a text file named .htaccess with the following contents:

    AuthType Basic
    AuthName "Password Required"
    AuthUserFile /users/{uX}/{a}/{username}/.htpasswd
    require valid-user

    Replace {a} with the first letter of your username. This must be lowercase.
    Replace {username} with your ONID username.
    Replace {uX} with the user group that you are in.
    Login using SSH? and type "pwd". Using WinSCP you can find this information above the file list of your ONID directory. Lastly, you can guess, there should only be u1 and u2.

    You will need to save this txt doc as .htaccess, or so that the name is blank, and the file extension is of type .htaccess.
  2. Connect to ONID (shell.onid.oregonstate.edu) via SSH. Basic directions can be found by following the previous link. You will have to use the SSH Secure Shell client to connect and get a shell prompt.
  3. At the shell:~> prompt type htpasswd -c .htpasswd {username} and press enter to create the .htpasswd file in your home directory. Replace {username} with the username you would like to user for web authentication. Note: If you wish to password protect another directory, type cd {directory path} before you create the .htpasswd file. Replace {directory path} with the directory path e.g. public_html/spring2010/assignments
  4. Type the password you would like to use.
  5. Retype the password you would like to use.
  6. Move the .htaccess file from your computer to the directory you wish to password protect.