SLASHGRID(8)

NAME
slashgrid - Local and remote virtual filesystems using grid credentials

SYNOPSIS

slashgrid [--debug] [--domain DOMAIN --groups GROUPS] [--local-root PATH --local-user USER] [--gridmapdir PATH] [--foreground]

SUMMARY
SlashGrid provides remote virtual filesystems under /grid ("slash grid") using HTTP/HTTPS as a transport protocol, and a local filesystem under /grid/local which can give access to the DocumentRoot area of a webserver on the same machine. In both local and remote cases, X.509, GSI Proxy and VOMS credentials can be used as the basis of authorization decisions.

REMOTE HTTP(S) SERVERS
SlashGrid maps URLs of the form https://d.n.s:port/path/file into virtual paths of the form /grid/https/d.n.s:port/path/file (with /grid/http/ for HTTP URLs.) SlashGrid attempts to obtain a user credential in the form of a GSI Proxy file, either indicated by the variable X509_USER_PROXY in the environment of the user's process, or a file of the form /tmp/x509up_uUID, where UID is their Unix user ID. If none is found, an authenticated HTTPS request is made. SlashGrid searches /etc/grid-security/certificates by default for CA root files when verifying the host certificate of remote servers. This can be overridden by users setting the variable X509_CERT_DIR in their environment.

SITECAST DOMAINS
If the slashgrid daemon is started with the option --domain, then URLs with DNS component matching the given domain will be located using SiteCast requests. SlashGrid will attempt to use UDP multicast queries to find a transfer URL of a copy of the file requested. The option --groups must also be used to specify a comma-separted list of one or more UDP multicast groups, which will be searched in order. The SiteCast area of the virtual filesystem is read-only (to prevent corruption of replicas.)

--domain DOMAIN
    SiteCast domain to use.

--groups GROUPS
    SiteCast multicast groups to query.

LOCAL FILESYSTEM
This filesystem is intended for use with GridSite/Apache webservers, which control access via .gacl policy files in each directory hierarchy. SlashGrid can interpret these files internally, and this allows other services, such as GridFTP running in chroot mode, to share access to a common file store.

--local-root PATH
    Top level directory in the underlying filesystem, which will be mapped to /grid/local/

--local-user USER
    Local user who will own the files created in the underlying filesystem.

--gridmapdir PATH
    Private gridmapdir used for mapping of pool users back to X.509 DNs. For example, after configuring GridFTP to use this gridmapdir.

OTHER OPTIONS

--debug
    Turn on debugging.

--blocksize BLOCKSIZE
    Change the default HTTP(S) block size in bytes. For streaming data, a much larger value than the default of 4096 may be appropriate. This may also be set for each user process if users set the environment variable SLASHGRID_BLOCKSIZE.

MORE INFORMATION
http://www.gridsite.org/wiki/SlashGrid

AUTHORS
Andrew McNab <Andrew.McNab@manchester.ac.uk> SlashGrid is part of GridSite: http://www.gridsite.org/

SEE ALSO
htcp(1), mod_gridsite(8)