UFTP Standalone Client

Unzip the archive in a location of your choice. Add the bin directory to your path. (Alternatively, you can copy bin/uftp script to a directory that is already on your path, in this case edit the script and setup the required directories.)

In this manual, we use the following format to indicate commands that you can type on the command line:

and assume that the bin directory of the UFTP client is on your path.

Invoking uftp without any arguments,

will list the available commands.

Invoking

will show help for a particular command

For password authentication, use the "-P" option. The password can be written into the URL, for example:

If not given in the URL, it will be queried interactively.

If "-P" is not given, the client will attempt to use your SSH key for authentication, this has to be configured on the authentication server accordingly.

In the following examples, the authentication service is located at "localhost:9000/rest/auth/TEST" and the user name is demo. Replace these values by the correct ones for your installation.

will list the /home/demo directory.

The cp command is used to copy local data to a remote server or vice versa. Remote locations are indicated by the "uftp://" prefix, and you need your user name, and the URL of the authentication server.

It has a number of features, which will be shown in the following.

Downloading a single file:

will download the /home/demo/test.data file to the current directory

Download files using wildcards:

will download all files in the /home/demo/test directory to the current directory

Similar commands work for upload.

The "cp" command can read/write from the console streams, which is great for integrating uftp into Unix pipes. The "-" is used as a special "file name" to indicate that data should be read/written using the console.

For example to tar the contents of a directory and upload the tar file using uftp:

Similarly, "-" can be used to write data to standard output. As an example, consider this:

Or use uftp to cat a remote file:

To copy just part of a file, a byte range can be given with the "-R" option. Counting starts at "zero". For example to download only the first 1024 bytes of file (i.e. the range 0 - 1023), you would do

As an additional feature, you can use the additional "-p" flag, which will write also only the given range. For example

will write bytes 1024-2047 of the remote file to the local file, starting at offset 1024.

The same thing works for remote files!

This feature has a number of interesting uses, for example parallel clients reading different parts of the same remote file, multiple server/client pairs for added throughput, etc.

The cp command supports the "-E" and "-C" options, which enable data encryption and compression (during transfer) respectively. These work only if a single data stream is used.

Data encryption uses a symmetric algorithm, which nonetheless drastically lowers the performance.

Data compression uses the gzip algorithm.

Compression and encryption can be combined.

If a copy command was terminated prematurely, it can be resumed using the "-r" option. If the "-r" option is present, the UFTP client will check if the target file exists, and will append only the missing data.

So if your inital copy operation

did not finish correctly, you can resume it with

Currently, sync only supports single files, i.e. no directories or wildcards! The syntax is

For example, to synchronize a local file with a remote "master" file:

To synchronize a remote file with a local "master" file:

This section lists and explains common error messages and their resolution.

Probably you gave a wrong username or password. Contact your site administrator if in doubt!

If using a password, make sure you give the "-P" flag.

Check the uftp:// URL that you use. Maybe you have a typo in the "/rest/auth/<servername>" part.

UNICORE Website: http://www.unicore.eu

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Developer’s list: unicore-devel@lists.sf.net