Dataglobs

The instructions provided in this article or section require shell access unless otherwise stated. You can use the PuTTY client on Windows, or SSH on UNIX and UNIX-like systems such as Linux or Mac OS X. Your account must be configured for shell access in the Control Panel. More information may be available on the article's talk page.

Instead of storing files in /home/username, DreamHost will store all of your files in folders called dataglobs. Your home directory may look like /home/.dataglob/username. A link is then created at /home/username to /home/.dataglob/username.

Finding out your dataglob

To find out what dataglob you are on, open a shell and type:

ls -la /home/username

without a trailing slash. Your full home directory location will be displayed, along with your dataglob name in it.

Problems with dataglobs

You should not use your dataglob path in your code at all, as they can change without warning. Use /home/username/ instead. If you do use these dataglobs in your paths, or leave them there if an application includes them when it derives a path, then your application will break rather badly should the dataglob be changed by DreamHost (your application will not know of the change).