vofs 3.1

Class Libraries for VOSpace file system

vosfs is a python module that allows a VOSpace service to be used as a file system.

The default installation of vosfs is tuned for accessing the VOSpace provided by the Canadian Advanced Network For Astronomical Research (CANFAR)

VOSpace is a Distributed Cloud storage service for use in Astronomy.

There are two ways to use vos:

1. make VOSpace appear as mounted filesystem: mountvofs

2. use the vosfs module inside a Python script: import vosfs

Authentication to the CANFAR VOSpace service is performed using X509 security certificates, header tokens or username/password pairs. The authentication system is managed by the CADC Group Management Service (GMS).

To retrieve an X509 security certificate for use with the vosfs tools use the cadc-get-cert script included with the cadcutils package.

Additional information is available in the CANFAR documentation

System Requirments

• A CANFAR VOSpace account (required for WRITE access, READ access can be anonymous)

• fuse OR OSX-FUSE (see additional documentation, only required for filesystem based access, not for command line or programmatic)

• python2.6 or later

Installation

vosfs is distributed via PyPI/vos and PyPI is the most direct way to get the latest stable release:

pip install vosfs --upgrade --user

Or, you can retrieve the github distribution and use

python setup.py install --user

Tutorial

1. Get a CANFAR account

2. Install the vosfs package.

3. Retrieve a X509/SSL certificate using the installed in cadc-get-cert script.

4. Example Usage.

   1. For filesystem usage: mountvofs mounts the CADC VOSpace root Container Node at /tmp/vospace and initiates a 5GB cache in the users home directory (${HOME}/vos_). fusermount -u /tmp/vospace (LINUX) or umount /tmp/vospace (OS-X) unmounts the file system. VOSpace does not have a mapping of your unix users IDs and thus files appear to be owned by the user who issued the ‘mountvofs’ command.

Integration Tests

The integration tests are, at present, designed to run only with the CADC VOSpace. Tests assume that the vofs package has been installed.

Run the tests:

``` $ ./test/scripts/vospace-mountvospace-atest.tcsh