The Meaning of PASS folders

Personal Web space folders

These folders are created when you apply for Personal Web space or when you run ACL Reset (on https://www.work.psu.edu/).

• www
  This folder contains your Personal Web space. This folder is publicly accessible by the entire Web, unless some steps are taken to restrict access. Your www folder is visible on the Web at http://www.personal.psu.edu/xyz123/ where xyz123 is your own Penn State Access Account userid.
• www/blogs
  This folder contains your public blogs created by the http://blogs.psu.edu/ service. In addition to signing up for Personal Web space, you must also apply for a blog as a separate step in order to use it. Read http://blogger.psu.edu/help/basics/activateblog for additional information.
  
• www_protected
  This folder contains your protected Web content. Files in here are not viewable by anyone unless you give them access via the Access Control Manager on https://protected.personal.psu.edu/. You may grant access to Penn State Access Accounts, Groups, Roles and Friends of Penn State Accounts. Your www_protected folder is visible on the Web at https://protected.personal.psu.edu/xyz123/ where xyz123 is your own Penn State Access Account userid. Penn State WebAccess login is required. Additional subfolders may be created for you such as:
  • Documents
  • ePortfolio
  • Photos
  • blogs
    

If any of these folders are deleted, you may use ACL Reset (on www.work.psu.edu) to recreate them and reset the permissions. If you wish to remove your Personal Web space, you may simply delete the www folder or send a request to the ITS Accounts Services Office. If you remove the www folder, you will loose all of your Web site content.

File Sharing folders

• share
  This folder contains file sharing folders. These were created by the "File Sharing" button of the PASS Explorer, which became no longer available on July 3, 2008. You may simply delete these folders when you are done with them. 

Penn State Portal

Since summer 2007, the Portal started using a local database rather than PASS for user preferences, thus this folder is no longer used. It may be deleted.

• .portal
  This folder contains preferences for your Penn State Portal session.

Penn State WebMail / IMAP

• .webmail
  This folder contains preferences for your Penn State WebMail session. Since Fall 2006, WebMail started using a dedicated filesystem instead of PASS, thus this folder is no longer used. It may be deleted.
  
• mail
  This folder contains mail folders that may be used by IMAP or an ITS UNIX Account e-mail program such as pine. It used to be used for mail folder storage by Penn State WebMail. Since Fall 2006, WebMail started using a dedicated filesystem instead of PASS, thus this folder is no longer used by WebMail. It may be deleted if you do not use IMAP to receive your Penn State e-mail or another e-mail program such as pine.
  
• attach
  This folder contains files received as email attachments in WebMail. Since Fall 2006, WebMail started using a dedicated filesystem instead of PASS, thus this folder is no longer used. It may be deleted.

Windows Lab Computers

ITS computer lab systems that run the Windows operating system currently use the U-Drive for Desktop and optionally My Documents folder storage (users can choose to store the My Documents folder in either U-Drive or PASS at any time). Other Penn State colleges and departments may run their own labs which may use the following folders in PASS:

• Desktop
  This folder contains desktop folders and icons that were stored by some lab computers.
• My Documents
  This folder contains the My Documents folder for some lab computers.

Macintosh

The following is a non-exhaustive list of folders that may be created by Macintosh computers while connected to PASS. They store information that is useful only to Macs. To delete them may cause some preferences on Macintosh systems to be lost, but it will not harm data files. Macintosh computers can regenerate them if needed without any special action.

• :2eDS_Store
  This folder contains the listing view of a Finder window.
• .AppleDouble
  This folder contains the "resource fork" for each file.
• Network Trash Folder
  This folder contains information about files that are dragged to the trash while in PASS.
• TheVolumeSettingsFolder
  This folder was created by Finder to keep track of information about open window positions, desktop printers, and other items.
• TheFindByContentFolder
  This folder was created by Sherlock to store information about file content for the Find By Content facilities.

ITS UNIX Account

These files are created when you sign up for the ITS UNIX Account. Contact ptpadmin@psu.edu if you need assistance with them.

• .cshrc
  This file contains your csh preferences.
• .login
  This file is a script that runs after you log in to your UNIX account.
• .logout
  This file is a script that runs once you log out of your UNIX account.