Highlander AFS is the primary academic computing environment at NJIT. Highlander AFS, NJIT’s implementation of the Andrew File System (AFS) is a distributed computing environment comprised of multiple file and database servers and several hundred Unix, Windows, Linux, and Macintosh client computers. Highlander AFS provides a very broad spectrum of both commercial and open source application software, compilers, and utilities. Variations of AFS are used as the primary file management system at Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University, University of Michigan, MIT, and hundreds of other education and research institutions.

Your UCID will be your Highlander AFS username. However, AFS passwords are maintained separately from the UCID password. To best access Highlander AFS services, your computer should be an AFS Client.  If your machine is not an AFS client, you may remotely login to one of a number of public AFS machines that support remote users.  The GITC 2305 computer lab houses 36 Sun Microsystems SunBlade 1000 workstations that can be used for this purpose.  These AFS clients are named afs1.njit.edu through afs36.njit.edu. Users can login to these machines locally or remotely. Remote access is provided by establishing a secure shell, or sftp session directly into one of these AFS clients. This feature will give you access to all of the services provided by AFS as well as the files in your personal storage space from a remote location, such as home or work.  Configure your Windows machine to become an AFS client.

E-mail

Highlander AFS also supports an additional mail service: oak.njit.edu, which is available for users who prefer a command line interface to access many of the UNIX mail utilities. Oak supports IMAP and POP mail clients, such as Pine, Netscape and Outlook. Highlander AFS supports all standard UNIX mail clients. More information on the Oak e-mail service can be found here.

Storage Space

Each student receives 125 MB of Highlander AFS disk space, often referred to as the "H-Drive". To access this H-drive from an on-campus Windows-based NJIT Domain( academic/ or njitdm/) computer, simply log into your account and open "My Computer". To access this storage space from an off-campus computer, you must use SSH Secure Shell (to download and install SSH, you must use VPN). Your disk space is backed up daily. A personal online backup of your files as of the previous day is automatically available. A directory named BACKUP.<username>.mm-dd-hh-MM will be located in your home directory containing the previous day's files. Additional space is available for course projects and research.

Web Pages

All personal web pages are stored on Highlander AFS.  Students are sometimes asked to create websites for classes they might be enrolled in as well.  Web.njit.edu is the web server for AFS. All Highlander AFS users can create a website on AFS. Once your Highlander AFS account is configured for web hosting, it will have a URL in the form: http://web.njit.edu/~yourUCID. If you are hosting audio or video files, it will have a URL in the form: http://harp.njit.edu/~yourUCID.  More information on setting up your homepage can be found here.

Software

A great number of applications and compilers are available on Highlander AFS.  Highlander AFS is a distributed file system consisting of Linux, IRIX and Solaris UNIX operating environments. Software types include desktop publishing, plotting, animation, and statistical analysis  More information about software installed on Highlander AFS (IRIX, Linux, Solaris) can be found here.

If you do not have a Highlander AFS account, please click here and complete the account creation application process.

Highlander AFS Website

Highlander AFS Support Page