Mediaflux Unimelb Command-Line Clients

Owned by Andy Tseng
Mar 21, 2024
3 min read

These are a collection of command line interface clients for Mediaflux developed at the University of Melbourne. They are mainly focused on uploading and downloading data to and from a Mediaflux server as well as verifying that an upload or download completed successfully.  They are written in Java and interact with Mediaflux using the HTTPS protocol which is secure and provides excellent data integrity guarantees, as well as allowing uploads and downloads to be efficient and restartable.  It is possible to enable checksum checking, which verifies successful transfers by comparing a CRC32 checksum on the local and remote sides.

The main clients are called

  • unimelb-mf-download provides efficient, restartable download to the local host from Mediaflux
  • unimelb-mf-upload provides efficient, restartable upload from the local host to Mediaflux
  • unimelb-mf-check provides efficient directory comparison/verification between the local host file system and Mediaflux (i.e. check that the source and destination are the same).

Additional items:

  • mexplorer - a shell wrapper for Mediaflux Explorer to make it easy to launch from the command line
  • aterm - a shell wrapper for Mediaflux aterm to make it easy to script from the command line
  • aterm-gui - a shell wrapper for Mediaflux aterm to make it easy to launch from the command line
  • aterm-import - a shell wrapper for the aterm import command (run aterm help download to see all options)
  • aterm-download - a shell wrapper for the aterm download command (run aterm help import to see all options)
  • other wrapper scripts for each platform.  See the ./bin/unix directory for macOS and Linux, and the ./bin/windows directory for Windows

University of Melbourne Spartan Users

Please note that these clients are pre-configured and available on the University's Spartan service.

Obtaining the unimelb clients

Download from the GitLab page by selecting the release for your platform (Windows/macOS/Linux) which includes an embedded Java distribution (recommended), or get the pure Java release which requires a local Java distribution.

Install

  • Unpack the downloaded zip file by double clicking on it via a GUI (or using a CLI unzip tool such as unzip on Unix systems)
  • Move the unpacked directory (named like unimelb-mf-clients-0.3.8) to wherever you'd like to keep it long term. E.g. the Desktop for Windows, or a ~/bin folder (on Unix systems like Linux and macOS)

Configure

Access to the Mediaflux server is managed via a configuration file which you must create and populate appropriately.

Add to your PATH

Optionally, you can add the commands to your PATH so that you can run them from any directory.

Using The Clients

Execute the client of interest on the command line and supply it the arguments that you need.

  • On Windows, the clients can be run from Windows PowerShell or the Command Prompt. You can start these by pressing the Start button and typing powershell or cmd, respectively.
  • On macOS, the clients can be run from the Terminal (Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal).
  • On Linux, you can execute the clients from any terminal or shell prompt. Linux commonly allows you to launch a terminal with ctrl-alt-t.


You can find some example of usage here:

  • unimelb-mf-download provides efficient, restartable download to the local host from Mediaflux
  • unimelb-mf-upload provides efficient, restartable upload from the local host to Mediaflux
  • unimelb-mf-check provides efficient directory comparison/verification between the local host file system and Mediaflux (i.e. check that the source and destination are the same).

and also see the Documentation in the source repository for examples.