File transfers using the bbftp command

To use the bbftp command, it is necessary for the corresponding deamon to be installed on the distant machine. To download the package, you should go to the following address: http://software.in2p3.fr/bbftp/download.html
Here is some advice for downloading files:

• In the list which is proposed to you, we recommend choosing the most recent version, version 3.2.1.
• The files suffixed with i386.rpm contain the Linux executable files.
• The files suffixed with tar.gz contain the source files which can be compiled on the Unix and Linux machines.
• The file whose name contains cygwin and is suffixed with .zip contains the Windows executable files.
• If you wish to use the bbftp command only from the IDRIS machines to transfer files to your local machine, you can install just the server file in your laboratory. If, in addition, you wish to use the transfer command on your local machine to transfer files to IDRIS machines, you should also install the client file.
• On Windows, only the client mode is available: The bbftp command does not allow you to transfer files from a batch job running on an IDRIS machine to a Windows PC. In case of difficulty during the installation, an IDRIS network engineer can help you.

On your local laboratory machine from which you are able to access to IDRIS supercomputer, you can use the commands below:

• To transfer a file from a local machine to an IDRIS machine:

  $ bbftp -e 'put local_file' -u idris_login -s machine.idris.fr
  Password (max length = 8192):
  put local_file OK 

• To transfer a file from an IDRIS machine to a local machine:

  $ bbftp -e 'get idris_file' -u idris_login -s machine.idris.fr
  Password (max length = 8192):
  get idris_file OK

To transfer files which are in a job batch, it is necessary to use the bbftp command via an SSH authentication, after having generated public keys which have “empty” passphrases. Cf. the procedure for putting an SSH authentication in place.

To avoid consuming computation hours with file transfers, you can use the archive partition for your batch job. You can also chain a file transfers job with a calculation job as indicated in our web documentation.

$ bbftp -e 'put idris_file' -u local_login -s local_machine.domain.fr
put idris_file OK

or with renaming the file:

$ bbftp -e 'put idris_file local_file' -u local_login -s local_machine.domain.fr
put idris_file local_file OK

$ bbftp -i commands_list -u local_login -s local_machine.domain.fr

The commands_list file contains lines which correspond to commands entered with option -e, for example :

$ cat commands_list
put idris_file
put idris_file local_rep/local_file
mget local_rep/*

$ bbftp -e 'mput idris_rep/*' -u local_login -s local_machine.domain.fr

or with creating local_rep repository to store data on your local machine:

$ bbftp -e 'mkdir local_rep; mput idris_rep/* local_rep' -u local_login -s local_machine.domain.fr