Basic usage of Allas
Accessing Allas via Allas web interface
- Login to Allas web interface: https://allas.csc.fi
- From the upper-left corner of the interface, select the CSC project you are using on this course.
- Create a new bucket by pressing the +Create Bucket button.
- Name it as
<id>-<username>
, in which<id>
is the number of your project and<username>
is your CSC username. Note that you cannot use a bucket name that already exists!
- Name it as
- Open the created bucket by clicking it.
- Upload one file from your computer into the bucket (any file should do, but prefer a file that you can open in Puhti, e.g. a text file). Upload process starts from the Upload button in the upper right corner of the interface.
π During the exercises, you can use this web interface to get another view to your buckets and objects in Allas.
Accessing Allas from Puhti command-line
Preparations (if not done already)
- Login to
puhti.csc.fi
(open a login node shell if using the web interface) -
In Puhti, check your environment with the command
csc-workspaces
-
Move to the scratch directory of your project:
cd /scratch/<project> # replace <project> with your CSC project, e.g. project_2001234
-
Create your own subdirectory named as your username (tip! your username is automatically stored in the environment variable
$USER
):mkdir -p $USER cd $USER
Connecting to Allas
-
Open a connection to Allas with these commands:
module load allas allas-conf
π‘ It might take a while to run
module load allas
- If you have several projects with access to Allas available, select the one where you just created a bucket using the Allas web interface
-
Study what you have in Allas with
a-commands
and with rclone:-
With
a-commands
:a-list a-list <id>-$USER # replace <id> with your CSC project number, e.g. 2001234 a-info <id>-$USER/<filename> # replace <id> with your CSC project number, e.g. 2001234, and <filename> with the file you uploaded
-
With
rclone
:rclone lsd allas: rclone ls allas:<id>-$USER rclone lsl allas:<id>-$USER rclone lsf allas:<id>-$USER rclone cat allas:<id>-$USER/<filename>
-
-
Download to Puhti the file that you just uploaded from your local computer to Allas. This can be done in two ways:
-
With
a-commands
:a-get <id>-$USER/<filename> # replace <id> with your CSC project number, e.g. 2001234, and <filename> with the file you uploaded
-
With
rclone
:rclone copy allas:<id>-$USER/<filename> ./ # replace <id> with your CSC project number, e.g. 2001234, and <filename> with the file you uploaded
-
- Open, edit and rename the file so that you can distinguish it from the original one.
-
Upload the new file to Allas:
-
With
a-commands
:a-put -b <id>-$USER <newfilename> # replace <id> and <newfilename> accordingly
π Try running
a-put -h
to understand the command-line switch above and to find more information on options.π¬ With larger text files it is good to include the option
-c
to enablezstdmt
compression of the files. -
With
rclone
:rclone copy <newfilename> allas:<id>_$USER/ # replace <newfilename> and <id> accordingly
-
-
Check that the file in Puhti indeed has a counterpart in Allas:
a-list <id>-$USER <newfilename> # replace <id> and <newfilename>
- Locate the files you just uploaded to Allas in the Allas web interface (search for the bucket name)
Clean up
-
Delete the local file from Puhti:
rm <filename> # replace <filename>
-
Whenever you need your data again, you can download it from Allas
π If you canβt find your file but remember the name, try a-find
. Use a-find -h
for help.
Extra: publish a file to the internet
π¬ The a-commands
include basic tools for publishing files to the internet. You might notice that the course slides use one of these! π€
βΌοΈ Note: Using these commands makes your entire bucket public! Do not engage if you donβt want that to happen. All files that you a-put
in the bucket later will also be accessible from internet, since the bucket is accessible.
Option 1: a-publish
-
Select a file that has an appropriate content and publish it with the command:
a-publish -b <id>-$USER <filename> # replace <id> and <filename>
-
The command outputs a URL (public link). Copy it to your browser or send it to your friends π
Option 2: a-flip
π¬ a-flip
is meant for files that need to be published only temporarily, for example for a one-time share.
-
Select a file that has an appropriate content and publish it with the command:
a-flip <filename> # replace <filename>
-
The command outputs an URL (public link). Copy it to your browser or send it to your friends π
βΌοΈ Note: a-flip
takes just the file name, not the bucket name like many of the previous commands.