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An instructor can request group folders in the IDAS instance (computing environment) for their class. These group folders can be used by students in the class for group projects.

1. Email research-computing@uiowa.edu and let us know:

   1. Your class name and number. Please include the section number, for example, FIN:1200:0003.

   2. How many group folders you want for your class.

2. ITS - Research Services staff will set up group folders for your class and let you know when the folders are ready.

3. You can then add students to each group folder using Access Management. Please see details in the section below.

4. After students have been added to their groups, it will take about 1-2 hours for permissions to propagate through the system. If students have an IDAS session running, they will need to restart their session using the steps here for the changes to be picked up.

5. Students can access the group folders inside the classdata folder in the IDAS class instance. For details, please see this section.

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1. We usually create the folders with the names group01, group02, group03, ... to ensure consistency in naming.

2. The following permissions are used for the group folders:

   1. The instructor of the class is the owner of the folders and has rwx permissions to the folders. The instructor can view, copy and edit files inside the folders.

   2. For each group folder:

      1. The instructor can add specific students to each group folder using Access Management, as outlined in the section below. The students who are given access to the folder will have rwx permissions to that folder. Those students can view, copy and edit files inside the folder.

      2. Everyone else in the class will have no permissions to view files inside the folder. That way, only members of a group can view files inside their group folder.

3. The group folders are created inside the classdata folder, because classdata is a shared location that can be accessed by more than 1 student in the class.

Suggested usage for the group folders

Group folders can help students share files with each other. However, they have some limitations.

• Editing Jupyter notebooks in the group folders can cause permissions issues.

  • Jupyter automatically creates a hidden folder called .ipynb_checkpoints. This hidden folder might not follow the permissions that were set when we created the group folders .

  • The .ipynb_checkpoints folder will be owned by 1 student, preventing the other students in the group from creating or editing notebooks in the group folder.

• In RStudio, new .R files might not automatically follow the permissions that were set when we created the group folders.

• Multi-user editing is not supported. If a student has a Jupyter notebook open in their account, another student will not be able to save changes to that same notebook.

Suggested workflows for these group folders:

• Each student creates a copy of their own .R script or Jupyter notebook in their IDAS home directory, outside of the classdata folder.

• When students are ready to share their .R scripts or Jupyter notebooks with their team members, they can copy & paste the finished script file or notebook into the group folder.

• These Linux commands may help troubleshoot permissions issues:

Add users to group folders using Access Management

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If you have any questions or comments, please contact research-computing@uiowa.edu.