FTS Channel Administration 2.0

This page describes the basic administration and monitoring of channels upon the service. Underlying details of the server (starting, stopping, logfiles, etc) are described in FtsServerAdmin20. Server installation and configuration is described in FtsServerInstall20. Standalone client installation and configuration is described in FtsClientInstall20.

Creating new channels

The FtsServerInstall20 guide details how to create channels in the database. In short, you need to:

1. Add a new channel in the DB using glite-transfer-channel-add.
2. Add a new agent daemon configuration to one of your agent nodes to service this new channel.

Managing channels

A channel or "queue" can be:

• point-to-point network connection, e.g. for the Tier-0 there is defined a single channel to every Tier-1 site.
• a "catch-all" channel

A channel or "queue" is the basic unit of management. The channel manager can control whether a channel is active or not, and how much work is being put on the network for a given channel. Channels can be managed independently.

To perform any channel management operations, you must have a valid grid or VOMS proxy:

voms-proxy-init

and you must also be authorized, either as a service administrator or as a channel administrator for the given channel. Use the glite-transfer-getroles command to see what priviliges you have upon the service. Note that by default, the root account on the FTS server machine is listed in the server administrator mapfile (in fact the host cert is listed in the mapfile, which the root account uses as its user cert).

Initially, try a list to see what channels are already defined on the system (if it is a new install on a blank database, there should be none):

glite-transfer-channel-list

note that man pages are available for all commands.

Problems you may see

If you see:

list: listChannels: SOAP fault: SOAP-ENV:Client - CGSI-gSOAP: Could not open connection ! (TCP connect failed in tcp_connect())

then either the service is down, or your services.xml file is pointing to the wrong endpoint. You can see what endpoint the client is attempting to connect to by using the version flag:

glite-transfer-channel-list -v

If you see:

list: Service discovery: No services of type org.glite.ChannelManagement were found

then either the services.xml file is missing or not readable by the client.

If you see:

list: listChannels: SOAP fault: "http://xml.apache.org/axis/":Server.NoService - The AXIS engine could not find a target service to invoke!  targetService is ChannelManagement

then either the endpoint specified in the services.xml file is incorrect, or the service is misconfigured.

To check whether the endpoint specified in the services.xml file is correct, connect to it directly with a web browser. e.g. connect to https://yourhostname:8443/glite-data-transfer-fts/services/FileTransfer (you will need your grid certificate loaded in your browser). If the service is listening, you should see a web page with a message like:

Hi there, this is an AXIS service!

If you see:

list: listChannels: You are not authorised for channel management upon this service

then you are not in the manager mapfile. Look in the FTS server logs (org.glite.data) to see how the authorisation decision was made.

Changing the state of channels

Although any paramters may be changed subsequently on a channel, only three operations are common: setting it active, setting it inactive and setting the number of concurrent transfers.

To set a channel mychannel to state Inactive:

glite-transfer-channel-set -S Inactive CHANNELNAME

This will stop putting any further work on the network. Any individual file transfers that have already been started will complete, so it can take a minute or two for all activity to stop.

To set the channel to state Active:

glite-transfer-channel-set -S Active CHANNELNAME

This will start putting work on the network if there are any jobs assigned to that channel in the Pending state.

To change the number of concurrent transfers being put on the network for a given channel:

glite-transfer-channel-set -f 10 CHANNELNAME

This will make the agent try to maintain 10 concurrent transfers on the channel when it is Active.

Dropping channels

To drop a channel:

glite-transfer-channel-drop CHANNELNAME

It is a current restriction that a channel cannot be dropped if any jobs have been assigned to it (because we do not cascade constraints on the database delete). We will provide a script to do this soon. Make sure that you are happy with a channel definition before submitting work that will be assigned to it.

Manual interventions on channels

When a file fails on a single transfer attempt, the system will attempt to retry it after some delay. The number of retry attempts and the delay are configurable on the service (defaults are 3 retries, waiting minimum 10 minutes between each retry attempt).

If a file fails, it will be placed in state Waiting. After the retry period has elapsed it will be placed back in the Pending state, and will subsequenrly be picked up again by the transfer agent.

If a file has been retried more than the max number of times, it is placed in the Hold state. This state indicates that some manual intervention should be made to rescue (or cancel) the file. The channel admin should periodically check for jobs with files in Hold state:

glite-transfer-list -c CHANNELNAME Hold

If there are any, there are two options for you. You may fix the whatever you believe the problem may be (e.g. reboot the SRM cluster) and try for one more retry.

glite-transfer-channel-signal -c CHANNELNAME Pending

All jobs on the channel in Hold state will be dropped back onto the Pending queue. The other option is to set all the jobs on the channel in Hold state to Canceling if you believe that there is nothing you can do to rescue the jobs (for example, if the filenames are invalid).

glite-transfer-channel-signal -c CHANNELNAME Canceling

You also have the option of applying the signal command to a single job, rather than all jobs on the entire channel.

glite-transfer-channel-signal -j 17cc7055-d3ac-11d9-a905-f173b72e4547 Pending

Running a test job

Identify a source SRM file name and a suitable destination SRM file name. The file names must be in the full SURL format:

srm://castorgridsc.cern.ch:8443/srm/managerv1?SFN=/castor/cern.ch/grid/dteam/storage/transfer-test/1gig/file-001.dat

Load into MyProxy the user proxy that will be used for the transfer. You must use the DN_as_username mode and set the maximum age of the proxy suitably. Make sure that the SURLs domainame's match the channel definition, that the channel is Active and that the number of concurrent files on the channel is greater than zero.

voms-proxy-init

myproxy-init -d
[enter your MyProxy password twice]

glite-transfer-submit \
   srm://castorgridsc.cern.ch:8443/srm/managerv1?SFN=/castor/cern.ch/grid/dteam/storage/transfer-test/1gig/file-000.dat \
   srm://srm1.tier1.sara.nl:8443/srm/managerv1?SFN=/data/dteam/testdestfile-glite-1.1.1-000.dat

choose your SURLs appropriately. This will return a UUID identifier, e.g.

17cc7055-d3ac-11d9-a905-f173b72e4547

To check the status of the job, run:

glite-transfer-status --verbose 17cc7055-d3ac-11d9-a905-f173b72e4547

which should print the state and some other information. You should see the job progressing through:

• Submitted (if you're fast). The job is still to be assigned to channel.
• Pending. The job has been assigned to a channel, and is awaiting a transfer slot.
• Active. The job is being transferred or the file is awaiting retry.
• Hold. The single file in the job failed 3 times and needs to be resuced by manual intervention.
• Done. The job and its file has completed successfully.

See the FtsServerAdmin20 guide about what is happening on the FTS machine itself.

If the job has gone entered state Done, then the test went fine.

Maintainer: GavinMcCance