In /afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/mach/public there used to be a file named afs . This file was a symbolic link. It was a link to /afs . So, if you wanted to, you could go round and round /afs/cs/project/mach/public/afs/cs/project/mach/public/afs/cs/project.. There is a subtle problem here. Actually there is a big problem with serving web pages out of /afs , but we've got an .htaccess file /afs/cs/project/mach/public that says grant access through the web server to everyone. Which means that we've inadvertently granted full web access (including javascripts and other things that we really didnt intend to do). On December 26, 2007, Dale Moore replaced the file /afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/mach/public/afs from being a symbolic link to /afs to being a symbolic link to this file afs.README . If you want to replace or restore things to the way that they used to be, please strongly reconsider and drop an email to Help@cs.cmu.edu about this change.