SRB 3.3

If you are upgrading from a 3.2 release, you must first run .../MCAT/data/321to330patch.xyz, where xyz matches your DBMS system (syb, ora, psg, inf, mys, or db2). If you are upgrading from a previous release, see the instructions in MCAT/README.MCAT.PATCH.

User Features

Sticky Bit for Access Control Inheritance

Users can set/reset a sticky bit for a collection (using Schmod -i option) to control how access is inherited. When set, any new srbObject or srbCollection created, copied, or moved into such a "sticky" collection will inherit all the access control permissions from that parent collection. Previously created children/descendants of the collection do not inherit any permission when the sticky bit is set. Also when the sticky bit is reset, no permissions are retracted.

Performance

Sphymove

The Server/MCAT code supporting Sphymove (to move an object or collection to another physical resource) has been completed revised to be more efficient. It now does bulk-mode operations directly from a resource to a target resource or container to move a large number of small files efficiently. In addition, it can now use parallel I/O to move large files efficiently. This was a critical request by some sites in the UK for their particular data system architecture.

Scp

The Scp command has been upgraded to support bulk-mode operations to improve the performance of copying a large number small files.

Administration

New domainadmin user type.

In addition to the old sysadmin user type (the 'srb' user), there is now a new one called 'domainadmin' who can create (non-privileged) users within their domain and create new datatypes. See the Java Admin Tool for more.

New group ownership privilege.

Users who have been given 'ownership' privilege over a group (by sysadmin) are able to add or remove other users to/from the group. See the Java Admin Tool for more.

Security

Optional alternative to plain-text passwords in .MdasAuth files.

For Scommands, users can save their passwords in an alternative file in a scrambled form to improve the security some. See the Sauth man page for more.

Support for GT3 GSI.

The Grid Toolkit version 3 of Grid Security Infrastructure is now supported in addition to the older versions of GSI and other authentication methods. See README.gsi.htm for more.

Non-plain-text passwords in MCAT.

Passwords stored in the MCAT are now automatically scrambled before storage in the DBMS and descrambled for use (in a different manner than Sauth), improving security some. As users change their passwords, the scrambled form will be stored.

Sput.pl and Sget.pl available later.

The two perl scripts that are the interface to the SRB Encryption and/or Compression system should be available shortly in a separate distribution. We are in the process of acquiring an export license for them.

Server Performance and configurations

Runtime communication port range configuration

In versions 3.2 and earlier, the communication port range is configured at compile time by setting the --enable-commstart and --enable-commnum options of "configure". In 3.3, the compile time configuration is still supported. But these parameters can be overridden at runtime by setting the commPortNumStart and commPortNumCount parameters in the runsrb script. In addtion, the communication port values are now output to the log file for verification.

Configuring SRB servers to use a single port for firewall consideration

An option is provided to configure SRB servers to use a single port for firewall consideration. In this mode, no prespawning of srbServer will be done. In addition, bulk load/unload and parallel put/get and copy will use only one port for the operations. It should be noted that this is a preliminary implementation and not all SRB operations have been tested with this configuration. This option is turned on by setting the SingleSvrPort parameter in the runsrb script.

Server Connection Timeout

The MCAT enabled server will now be disconnected to the database server if it does not receive any new requests in 2 hours. The connection will be re-established once a new request arrives. In addition, an optional parameter - ServerTimeOut in the runsrb script can be set to enable srbServer timeout which causes a srbServer process to exit if no new request is received within the timeout limit.

Zone Configuration Info

The Zone Configuration Info which includes info on local and remote zones will now be output to the log file for verification.

Handle network load balancer

Added code to operate with with network load balancers. These are hardware devices which select between addresses from a pool (in a round robin manner) for improved performance.

Added UNIX_SYNC_ON_CLOSE option to sync data to disk when a file is closed

Added a configurable option - UNIX_SYNC_ON_CLOSE to automatically sync data from system cache to disk when a UNIX file is closed. This is needed to prevent data corruption of newly ingested files followed by a system crash. The drawback is the overall ingestion rate could be reduced by half when this option is turned on. Therefore, UNIX_SYNC_ON_CLOSE is not turned on by default. It can be turned on by uncommenting the line "# UNIX_SYNC_ON_CLOSE = 1" in the mk/mk.config file.

Added AUTO_SYNC_FULL_CONTAINER

This option enables the automatic synchronization of a full container to an archival physical resource by the srbServer.

More robust handling of connection from non-SRB client

More robust handling of connection from non-SRB client such as port scan from network security group or hackers.

Added ADS (Atlas Data Store from RAL) driver

Added ADS driver from Bonny Strong of RAL.

GridFTP

SRB on top of GridFTP.

GridFTP can now be configured and defined as an SRB resource. Like with other resources, data objects can be stored in a GridFTP resource under the control of the srb user.

GridFTP on top of SRB.

The GridFTP Server can be configured to make use of SRB space in place of local disk space. This is done via an SRB-specific gridFTP DSI (Data Storage Interface) which links with the SRB Client library.

We'd like to acknowledge and thank John Bresnahan of the GridFTP team at ANL for working with us on these; in particular in developing the SRB on GridFTP DSI.

Zone Management

Improvements to zonesync.pl (now Szonesync.pl)

This includes a bug fix, ignoring inactive zones, and automatically creating and cd'ing to a subdirectory for the working files. zonesync.pl has been renamed Szonesync.pl and is now in the utilities/admin-bin subdirectory.

New zoneingest.pl script to more easily create remote zones.

zoneingest.pl takes as input the output of the 'Stoken Zone' command run at remote site. See the beginning of the script for more information.

Updates to the Scommand Utilities

Scat

added 'Version' as an option

Schmod

added -i option to to set/unset the "ACL inheritance bit" of a collection.

added an option -b for bulk changes of permissions (similar to -D -r of earlier versions) note that Schmod also has option to change ownership of a dataset/collection. There is no separate Schown command.

Sget

added option [-W] to use version string in finding source object See new notes added about options -m, -M and -b.

SgetColl

added three new options

-e displays count and total size of files in the collection grouped by users

-f displays count and total size of files in the collection grouped by resources

-g displays count and total size of files in the collection

SgetR

this command has been extended to go across (possibly all known) zones.

SgetU

added an option (-G) to display group(s) for which the user is a groupowner.

added a new synopsis to display members and owners of user groups.

this command has been extended to go across (possibly all known) zones.

Singestuser

added zoneName as an option hence allowing registration of users not in loal zone.

Sls

added an option [-v] to show version

the condition-based listing has been extended to go across (possible all known) zones.

The -C option will now display an "I" if the "ACL inheritance bit" of a collection is set.

Slscont

added option [-A] to display containers accessible by the user, when this option is not used

added option [-F] to display all inContainer objects.

this command has been extended to go across zones.

Smkdir

added the much requested option [-p] to create a chain of collections if any intermediate collections do not exist.

added option [-T] to move data to trash.

added option [-V] to change the version string

SmodifyUser

added option to addUserGroupOwner, delUserGroupOwner, changeZone, changeUserAddress, changeUserEmail, and changeUserPhone.

Spasswd

modified to conform to new option provided by the new command called Sauth (ref. Sauth)

Sput

The -P option has been extended to deal with collections also. See new notes added about options -m, -M and -b.

Sreplicate

added option [-V] to use version string in finding source object

added a new synopsis to ingest a local file as a replica of an existing SRB object.

Stoken

this command has been extended to go across (possible all known) zones.

Sufmeta

this command has been extended to go across (possible all known) zones.

NEW SCOMMANDS:

Sauth - Create an SRB password file with scrambled contents

Sconvert - convert an image or sequence of images

SmodE - modifies extensible table metadata

Sstage - stages files from SAM-QFS from off-line to on-line

Squery - pure query command for MCAT

Singestgroup - adds a group user account

Singesttoken - ingests SRB native metadata types (reserved keywords)

Depreciated:

Sbload (not completely)

Sbunload

srbBrowser - JAVA JNI GUI

The srbBrowser has been fixed to work with the 3.3 release. The following improvements have been made:

Add the capability to select multiple files and directories for import, export, replicate and copy.

Add the ability to select the default transfer mode - serial, parallel/clientInitiated, parallel/serverInitiated and bulk.

Always display the default settings (Resource, Transfer mode, Container and Comment) on the metadata panel. Previously, the user have to use the menu to display these items.

Add a text message panel at the bottom of the frame to display the status of operations. Previously, a popup window was used to display these status.

For the "Select Resource" operation, the list of resources available for selection now reflects the zone of the highlighted file/collecion. the resource.

Misc bug fixes

The bulk put/get operations have been made more robust.

Allow normal user to unregister or delete SRB files if the in-vault files do not exist.

Allow parallel I/O when Sput -P is used.

Fix a problem with "Sget -m" failure or Scp failure when multiple large files are transfered. This error seems to affect only the Linux platform and not the Solaris platform. Error msg returned include ""UNIX error. Broken pipe", "UNIX error. Bad file number" and "Unknown UNIX error". This is the same fix as the one given in the 3.2.1+ patch.

Bugzilla

The (recently introduced) SRB Bugzilla home is at http://srb.npaci.edu/bugzilla and can be used to query and view open or closed bugs and/or enhancement requests, and/or to submit new ones. The following link lists items resolved for this release: http://srb.npaci.edu/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?&chfieldfrom=2004-07-02&chfieldto=2005-02-18&bug_status=RESOLVED As always, many smaller bug fixes and enhancements have also been made and various documentation files updated.

More extensive testing

Although we have always done quite a bit of testing before each release, we have now developed additional automatic test scripts to help with us stress-test and verify the operation of various functions. This has been quite useful and we plan to extend the scripts in the near future. These are designed for internal SDSC use only.