The short answer to this is not much . All unix applications will see a normal unix file as before. At a level below the normal unix file, the AFS client is keeping some local information and communicating with the AFS server. Protection mechanisms Access control lists are used to control protection. Protection is at the directory, not file level.
Users can create and maintain their own groups.
AFS pts commands replace chmod and chgrp commands. Authentication mechanism Users must hold a valid token to access their home directories. Tokens have a fixed lifetime and must be refreshed when they expire. The default lifetime for tokens at UNCG is 25 hours. Here at UNCG, we are using a one step AFS login process.