rftp is an ftp-like client program that can be used by all users at the RCF to archive data into HPSS. With this tool, user's data can be put into their experiment's RCF HPSS archive class of service.
Access to HPSS via this mechanism is limited to 20 users at a time so that rftp access does not impact data taking or reconstruction and analysis. In addition, due to the characteristics of HPSS storage, users should only place large data files into HPSS. (The minimum allocation of "space" in HPSS is 1MB, so placing a 5 byte file into HPSS will "eat up" 1MB of HPSS disk cache. So a few dozen small files can potentially fill the HPSS disk cache). If users want to store small files, they should be bundled together via a command like htar into one big file.
rftp currently runs on the following machines within RCF:
For a list of the available commands within rftp, run the program interactively and enter the command ?. The standard ftp commands that rftp supports will be displayed. A brief description for any given command can be displayed using the command ? cmd where cmd is any legal command.
Some of the commands can be added into user's .netrc to set up the rftp user environment. The following is an example to use umask in .netrc
machine machineName
macdef init
umask 022
RFTP is being replaced by the new tool hsi/htar, no further development is planned, and only basic maintenance will be carried out. Users should start modifying their HPSS interface script to use hsi/htar.