CERN Accelerating science

Transferring Files from CERNVM to UNIX

  Germán Fernández CN/DCI & CIEMAT and Miguel Marquina CN/DCI

Introduction

With the rundown of the CERNVM Service, users will be facing one of the most delicate problems that arise when moving to another environment, namely the migration of their private file space.

Other than general purpose solutions trying to address user archiving and backup of user data, we appreciate the need for a handy tool which permits users with modest space requirements to perform their own migration at their own convenience.

In this context, we have developed two utilities which allow easy exporting of VM files to UNIX by means of the traditional tar utility.

Exporting VM files

The VMEXPORT tool picks up selected text (EBCDIC) files from a minidisk and sends the resulting tar file via the File Transfer Protocol (ftp) program to the user's Home Directory. Its syntax is similar to VM/FILELIST:

 VMEXPORT <filename> <filetype> [<filemode>]

VMEXPORT will prompt the user for a UNIX account and password; it will then install the file

[<VMuser>.][<filename>.][<filetype>.]<disknumber>.tar

checking for the pre-existence of the tar file in UNIX, and asking for permission to replace if necessary.

A sample session follows:

(from GERMAN@CERNVM)
VMEXPORT * fortran
>Archiving aaa fortran a
>Archiving test fortran a
>...
>Enter Unix address:
german@hpcernix.cern.ch
>Enter password:
**********
>Connected to german@hpcernix.cern.ch
>Saving fortran.191.tar

VMEXPORT * * B
>Archiving xxx fortran b
>Skipping new txtlib b (binary file)
>Skipping photon module b (binary file)
>...
>Enter Unix address:
marquina@hpcernix.cern.ch
>Enter password:
**********
>Connected to marquina@hpcernix.cern.ch
>Saving german.193.tar

Importing VM files to UNIX

The corresponding import utility has been called vmimport. This case is much simpler than the previous one as it reduces itself to a check for the pre-existence of the untared directory before performing a 'tar xvf' of the tar-file.

Migrating your MAIL/VM Data

The VMEXPORT utility can be used to move all your NOTEBOOK folders to your preferred UNIX Service, following the procedure described above. Once there, remember that you have the following utilities available:

-

nb2folder : to translate NOTEBOOKs to UNIX mail-folder format (compatible with pine ).

-

names2alias : to translate NAMES files to UNIX mail-alias format (compatible with pine ).

-

namesedit : to maintain your NAMES file in UNIX; equivalent to the VM utility NAMES.

A more detailed description has been given in CNL 220, and on-line documentation as well as a UCO Reference Card is available on this subject.