DCS 4.0 Information

Revision Date: August 1, 2008

Introduction

The Distributed Computing Services (DCS) software provides the user interface for the NCAR Mass Storage Services (MSS), which provides data archival storage services for NCAR users. This web site describes version 4.0 of the DCS software, gives links to the software, and will provide status information for the DCS 4.0 software.

The DCS 4.0 software will only function internal to the UCAR security perimeter. If your system is not attached to a UCAR subnet inside of the security perimeter, you will not be able to run the DCS software. In this case, you must either use the MSS FTP Server, or have an account on an interactive system (provided by CISL or other UCAR entity) and use that system as an intermediary between your system and the MSS.

User Documentation

Currently the DCS 4.0 documentation is available in either HTML or PDF forms. It brings together material previously scattered about in several locations, including introductory material, detailed descriptions, usage guidelines and reference pages. The command and library routine reference pages are also provided as traditional man pages as part of the DCS Client distributions.

Status

Date	Description
May 1, 2006	The limit on the number of files and directories for a single msrcp command writing to the MSS was reduced to 1,000.
May 3, 2006	Updated Client distributions with fix for msrcp error reporting when reads from the MSS fail due to error (quota, no space) on Client's system.
June 8, 2006	Fixed problem reporting URL in documentation and man pages
December 22, 2006	Updated documentation
July 18, 2008	Updated msrcp documentation with an important note about use in batch jobs.
August 1, 2008	Updated dcsq documentation with a description of the output.

Installation Information

If your system is not attached to a UCAR subnet inside of the security perimeter, you will not be able to run the DCS software.

NOTE:The DCS 4.0 software does not yet work from a system connected via a VPN connection.

Installation Instructions

Support Policy

The support policy for DCS 4.0 can be found at DCS 4.0 Support Policy

Summary of Changes from DCS 3.3

This section gives a brief summary of the changes from the current DCS version 3.3 software.

You will need /usr/local/dcs-4.0/bin in your path to use it. If you are on a system that has DCS 3.3 also installed, make sure you order your path appropriately. Your system administrator may have made DCS 4.0 the default version by suitable symlinks. You can determine which version you are using by running msls -V and examining the output.
The OSF Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) library is no longer required.
The DCS client commands can be configured for use behind (UCAR internal) firewalls. See the installation instructions for details.
The DCS command queue management commands have changed (dcsjlog, dcsq, dcsrm and dcswait). The command options and command output will be different from the DCS 3.3 versions.
The msrcp command will not permit more than 1,000 directory or file names to be used (either explicitly or via wild card or directory recursion) when writing to the MSS. This is to prevent accidental transfers of excessive numbers of files to the MSS. Note that this limit is preliminary and may be changed in either direction.
Improved C and Fortran callable library support. The old library API has been depreciated, but is still provided to aid porting. Example code using the new API is available in /usr/local/dcs-4.0/examples.