LRZ Grid Portal: SGGC's Guide

SGGC at LRZ

What is SGGC?

SGGC is a Java based client GUI for file transfer in grid environment. It supports the use of grid certicates for authentication in addition to normal username/password login. Since this application is written in Java, it is supported on most platforms (e.g., Windows, MAC and Linux).

SGGC supports both regular FTP and GridFTP. It also supports transfer between servers using different protocols. Useful transfer modes like simultaneous (parallel) multiple files transfer, striped transfer (multiple source, single destination) and resume broken transfer are available.

Preparing for SGGC

Grid Certificates

Users should make sure that their grid certificates (usercert.pem and userkey.pem) are on their local machine. We strongly recommended for the users to place their grid certificates in a folder ".globus" in their respective home directory. For Linux/Unix user, the ".globus" folder should be in $HOME. For Windows user, the ".globus" folder should be in following directory: "C:\Documents and Settings\{username}".

CA certificates and signing policies for access LRZ's grid are also required. For Linux/Unix users who have installed other grid middlewares, these certificates are probably already in your "/etc/grid-security/certificates" directory. For Windows and Linux users who have not installed any grid middlewares, please create a "certificates" folder in the ".globus" folder. Download and extract the content of this file [lrzGridCerts.tar.gz] into the "certificates" folder.

Installing and Setting up SGGC

Simply download the zip archive from the following webpage [here]. Create a folder and uncompress the content of this archive to the folder. You will need Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 1.5 or higher installed to run this application.

Starting SGGC

To start SGGC, simply type the following command from the terminal window where SGGC is downloaded and set up.
java -jar sggc.jar

Basic User Guide

The following window will be shown when SGGC is started:

The left window shows your local file system. To connect to a remote machine, fill in the textboxes, "HostName" and "Port", with the following information.

For HLRB2 grid users:
HostName: a01.hlrb2.lrz-muenchen.de
Port: 2811

For Linux Cluster grid users:
Hostname: lxgt2.lrz-muenchen.de
Port: 2811

Click on the "Connect" button. A new window "Grid Authentication" as shown below will appear.

In the "Enter passphrase" field, enter the passphrase of your grid certificate. You can also lengthen the lifetime of your proxy certificate by changing the "Lifetime (days)" field to 2 or 7. Click on the "Authenticate" button when you are done. You should notice that the "Status" section of this window is updated with your "Identity", "Autheticated" status, "Time remaining" before proxy certificate expires and "VO membership" information if available. You can now close this window by selecting the "Close" button.

You now have an active GridFTP session at LRZ. The main SGGC window should be updated with the folders and files of your home directory at LRZ.

To upload a file, simply right click on the file (on the left panel) and select "Upload Selected". To download a file, right click on the file (on the right panel) and select "Download Selected". You can upload or download multiple files by holding down the "Control" key of your keyboard while selecting the files/folders. You can also drag and drop files and folders from one window to another.

Advanced User Guide

Users are allowed to add (save) a server to the Site List. To do so, select menu "Tools"->"Site"->"Add Site" or select the "Site List" tab on the left panel, right click on the panel and select "Add Site". The following window is shown:

You would need to input only 5 fields ("Name", "Type", "HostName", "GridFTP Login Mode") as shown in the above window. For hostnames and ports of HLRB2 and the Linux Cluster, please refer to Basic User Guide.

Users can connect to more than one remote machine at any one time. If you have added the server to the Site List, simply double-click on the server you wish to connect to in the "Site List" panel. The following image shows the use case where the user (DEISA user) is connected to both HLRB2 and a machine at SARA, Netherlands. The user can now transfer files between these 2 remote machines by simply dragging the file from one window to the other.

If you face any problems, please contact grid-admin@lists.lrz.de

General Useful links

General Hints:

When starting SGGC, you might see the warning message "WARN - Environment Variable 'GLOBUS_LOCATION' not set! - AWT-EventQueue-0". You can ignore this message.