Plugin Services Available via the Desktop

Owned by Andy Tseng
Mar 21, 2024
4 min read

Introduction 

The Mediaflux Desktop Asset Finder tool provides an extensible environment into which we, the UoM Mediaflux service operator, can plugin extra services that we have developed.  These are visible when you right click on a project namespace (folder) or sub-namespace that you have access to with the Asset Finder.   When you right click on a namespace, a new GUI pops up, and you can see various items in the menu. The ones towards the bottom above the destroy item and between the horizontal dividers are the ones that we have added (starting with Copy Namespace).   The function you are going to execute pertains to the namespace that you have selected. The functions available are currently:

  • Copy namespace - copy a namespace from one location to another.
    • Tools like the Explorer and Desktop move the namespace if you just drag it somewhere else. Sometimes a copy is useful (but be mindful of unnecessarily duplicating data). See here for more information.
  • Download from an sFTP server (e.g. the Australian Synchrotron).  
    • You will need to fill in the details of the sFTP server that you want to download from, including your username and password.
    • There is no browse feature here, you just have to specify the source path to download. 
    • The data will be downloaded to the namespace you have right-clicked on.
    • Use a tool like the Explorer or the Desktop to see the data arriving
    • This function
      • can handle source symbolic links - they will generates special Mediaflux symbolic link assets
      • can be multi-threaded, but for large files, little improvement will be gained beyond 1 thread
      • can notify the user when completed (so you can run in the background for long downloads)
      • can skip already uploaded files (checking by path and file size only (a checksum check is not possible with sFTP)
    • Example of main arguments for Australian Synchrotron
  • Recursively compute checksums  in a namespace and email a CSV.
    • Mediaflux natively uses CRC32 checksums. It's pretty common to need others such as MD5 which is one of the choices available in this service.
  • Recursively count and sum a namespace
    • The resulting sum is in bytes and human-readable form
  • Recursively validate asset and namespace names in the context of cross-operating system consistency.


Example and Details


Please note

  • The progress meter you will see when you execute a service does not function correctly at present. This will be fixed in a future update - just ignore it for now.




Hover over an item of interest to see a description of what it does.  Then, simply select the item that you want (left click) and then a new GUI will further pop up for that function. Fill in the required details and click the button in the bottom right of that GUI (it's label reflects the function you have selected) to execute.

Here is an example (selecting 'Recursively compute checksums in namespace') where you can email a CSV of the MD5 checksums of all the assets in and below the namespace of interest.


Once you have started the execution, the GUI will be replaced with another to present you with any output and includes:

  • Progress meter - the progress meters don't work usefully yet so just ignore them!
  • A new button, Abort. If you click this the process will be aborted.
  • A new button, Background. If you click this, the GUI will disappear and the task will continue to execute in the background. However, you will lose any output (including errors) that it might have presented to you in that GUI (so it's mainly useful for long-lived tasks that are going to send you output by email or there is no output)



Sometimes, after the service completes, you may see an error GUI like this. If the error type is "Error: com.google.gwt ..."  just ignore that and dismiss the error GUI (a ticket has been raised for this) this is not indicative of a data transfer issue.