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Petashell Installation Guide and User Manual

  1. General Information
  2. Supported System
  3. Installation
  4. Usage
  5. Options
  6. Online Sites
  7. Contact
  8. Acknowledgment

General Information

Petashell allows users to attach their existing programs in local machines to the data on remote PetaShare sites, so it makes PetaShare resources appear as a local directories to the application within a shell.

Supported System

Petashell is running on Linux.

Installation

The installation is straightforward:

1) Unpack the petashell package:

$ tar xvfz petashell-(version).tar.gz

2) Go into the top directory of the package

$ cd petashell-(version)

3) Run 'setup' script

$ ./setup

Hopefully, there should be no error, and that's it!

Please open a new terminal to use petashell...

if you received an error regarding globus, please run the setup script with the --disable-globus option!

$ ./setup --disable-globus

Usage

To run petashell type the following;

$ petashell

then, it falls into its own shell. After this point local applications can be used on PetaShare sites. PetaShare sites can be accessed by using similar command;

$ ls /petashare/lsu

which lists the directories under 'lsu' site.

It is convenient to access PetaShare resources as like as UNIX directories by using the '/petashare/<site-name>' virtual path:

$ cd /petashell/lsu/tempZone/home/testuser

it drops into home directory of testuser in PetaShare, so programs can be associated with data which is over there. For example, a file can be edited by using of favourite text editor(like vi) by using:

$ vi file1

where file1 resides in '/petashell/lsu/tempZone/home/testuser' and vi is running in local machine.

Options

petashell has the following options;

--change-user | -c
--get-sites | -g
--shell | -s
--debug | -d
--help | -h

--change-user(or -c) option:
You should run petashell with this option immediately after you install petashell package to activate PetaShare account and get credentials. petashell package comes with a default 'testuser' account. This account has many restrictions and can be used by all petashell users. One can use this account until obtains a private account. When a private account has been obtained, this option must be used to activate the account in that machine, and(or) to switch between existing account(s) and 'testuser' account.

$ petashell -c

or

$ petashell --change-user

it will prompt a username and a password.

To switch 'testuser' account, type 'testuser' for username. There is no need to enter a password for 'testuser'.

--get-sites(or -g) option:
It is necessary to obtain the information of new petashare sites. It should be run when the new petashare sites become online. This command retrieves the required information to connect to the available PetaShare sites. Type the following:

$ petashell -g it will download the latest list of PetaShare sites and their respective parameters.

--shell(or -s) option:
It allows you to specify shell type you want to run . Default is 'sh'. If you want to use tcsh instead of sh, simply run:

$ petashell -s tcsh

--debug(or -d) option:
It enables debug utility to trace the system execution... This option can be used to help PetaShare programmers to troubleshoot your problems...

$ petashell -d irods

--help(or -h) option:
It pop ups the help screen. It basically shows what are the options, and their respective usage.

$ petashell -h

Online Sites

Following sites are online right now:

Contact

http://www.petashare.org

Acknowledgement

petashell is based on parrot(cctools) and iRODS. You can visit following webpages for further information.

parrot: http://www.cse.nd.edu/~ccl/software
iRODS : http://www.irods.org