News

Owned by Andy Tseng
Last updated: Nov 18, 2024 by Robert Hutton
5 min read

This page summarises updates to the Mediaflux service that are of relevance to users.

Mediaflux Server

  • Upgrades
    • Upgraded on 18-Nov-2024 to v 4.16.083_002
      • Fixes for internal database audit logs
    • Upgraded on 08-Nov-2024 to v 4.16.083
      • Improved SMB performance on macOS through improved Named Streams support
      • Fewer ._ files will now be created when using SMB on macOS, especially when working with Microsoft Office files
      • Named Streams now support recent versions of Windows 10 and 11
      • RStudio can now use a mapped Mediaflux SMB network drive for its working directory
    • Upgraded on 29-Oct-2024 to v 4.16.080
      • SMB Named Streams can now be fully disabled.  This fixes a blue screen crash on some Windows machines with particular security configuration.
      • aterm-web now has improved MFA enrollment process and general MFA UI
      • Fixed MFA enrollment for accounts in an AD domain (e.g. unimelb and unimelb-student)
    • Upgraded on 14-Oct-2024 to v 4.16.074
      • Better MFA support for native clients (aterm, aterm-web, Desktop, Explorer, unimelb-mf-clients)
      • MFA TTL and timeout supported on domains that do not require MFA
      • Allow users to unenrol from MFA when MFA is not required on their domain
      • Support for secure identity tokens with/without passwords on all clients
      • SMB performance improvements on macOS
      • SMB import-by-reference
      • Now possible to store MD5 and SHA-256 checksums for asset content
      • Asset Lifecycle analyses can now be generated
      • Improved support for long-running uploads with Mediaflux Data Mover
    • Upgraded on 05-Aug-2024 to v 4.16.053
      • Complete MFA support
      • SMB and SFTP secure identity tokens added
      • LDAP performance improvements
    • Upgraded on 19-Feb-2024 to v 4.16.023
      • Additional MFA support
        • IP-based Time-To-Live
        • MFA on SMB
      • aterm-web
        • new edit command for text files
        • progress bar's background fill percentage now reflects service completion progress
        • service execution time is now displayed in the progress bar
      • Active Directory lookup caching
      • SMB authentication fixes and improvements
      • SMB now capable of handling symbolic links
      • Asset names can now begin with a colon (:)
    • Upgraded on 18-Sep-2023 to v 4.15.012
      • Additional features for MFA
      • SMB authentication fixes and improvements
      • POSIX named pipes now supported on NFS
      • Data Mover fixes and improvements
      • Asset destruction policies added
      • General improvements and defect fixes
    • Upgraded on 19-Jun-2023 to v 4.14.092
      • Additional Data Mover features (licences and supplemental files)
      • SMB secure channel support
      • SMB performance improvements (up to 40% faster)
      • Many other performance improvements
      • General improvements and defect fixes
    • Upgraded on 08-Sep-2022 to v  4.14.020
      • General improvements and defect fixes
    • Upgraded on 15-Jun-2022 to v 4.14.004
      • support for downloading a subset of a share with Mediaflux Data Mover
      • support for configuration of defaults for shares in Mediaflux Explorer
    • Upgraded on 08-Dec-2021 to v 4.12.036
      • initial multi-factor authentication support
      • improvements to Data Mover efficiency and functionality
      • new SSH key algorithm rsa-sha2-256 for SFTP
      • general improvements and defect fixes
    • Upgraded on 13-Jul-2021 to v 4.12.019_001 - general improvements and defect fixes.
    • Upgraded on 07/08-Dec-2020 to v 4.10.028 - generic improvements and defect fixes. The underlying storage infrastructure was also upgraded.
    • Upgraded on 06-Jul-2020 to v 4.9.079 - support for the new DataMover tool, plus generic improvements and defect fixes
  • Outages
    • There was an unexpected outage on 14-Oct-2021 from 18:15 to 20:35 (when the system was restarted).   It is understood what happened and a fix will be forthcoming (it is very unlikely to reoccur in the meantime).
  •  Other
    • 'VicNode' authentication domain renamed to 'local' (on 13-Jul-2020) and an alias 'VicNode' temporarily left in place (removed 10-Aug-2020)
    • Standard Port 22 enabled for SFTP access (21-Sep-2020). Non-standard Port 21 was disabled for SFTP access on 12-Oct-2020.

Mediaflux Clients

  • Mediaflux Explorer
    • See the Change Summary for Mediaflux Explorer for more information
    • 19-Sep-2023 (v1.6.1)
      • Deafult protocol for login is now https instead of http
      • Support for new Data Mover features:
        • DOIs
        • Licences
        • Supplemental files
        • Audit logs
      • Ability to download multiple individual files added
      • The window now correctly paints when first logging in on Linux
      • Crash when pressing ESC to close a window on Linux fixed
      • Many minor enhancements and stability fixes
    • 28-Sep-2022 (v1.5.6)
      • Download shareables and links now have configurable defaults
      • Form fields now glow red when invalid input is entered
      • Search fields now support wildcards
      • Many minor enhancements and stability fixes
    • 01-Sep-2021 (v1.5.2)
      • Minor enhancements and stability fixes
    • 06-May-2021 (v1.5.1)

      • Metadata copy/paste support

      • New upload and download shares utilising the Data Mover tool for safely transferring very large datasets

      • Support for symbolic links
      • Checksum checking on upload/download
      • Quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes
  • Data Mover
    • 06-Feb-2024 (v1.2.10)
      • Watch folders: allows Data Mover to monitor a directory for changes and upload new files after they have become quiescent (not changed for 60 seconds)
      • Symlink support
    • 19-Sep-2023 (v1.2.4)
      • A remote IP can now be blocked from using Mediaflux IO nodes.  This is required for certain firewall configurations.
      • Recipient email addresses can now be pre-populated into a list that can serve as suggestions or can be locked to only go to a member of that list.  The list can be updated at any time.
      • Recipients who wish to copy the data to their own Mediaflux project can now choose a destination by browsing within their project.
      • There is now a resume-all button that will resume all paused or interrupted transfers.
        • There is now a configuration option in settings.xml that can enable auto-restart/resume: <auto-resume>true</auto-resume>
      • Audit records have been added.  These allow a sender to know how many times a shareable has been used to download the data, and whether all of the data were successfully transferred.  The audit records can be downloaded as a CSV from within the Manage Shares window in Mediaflux Explorer.
      • The layout of various GUI elements has been improved to make better use of screen space.
    • 15-Jul-2022 (v1.1.15)

      • Can now select multiple files and folders for upload

      • Can now select a subset of data for download via a new GUI component

      • Now handles symbolic links (upload/download as link or follow link on upload).

      • Now supports enumerated lists for keywords in upload GUI

      • Will not allow upload if inputs (e.g. email) fail validation

      • CLI will now honour a shareable token stored in the settings.xml file

      • Many robustness and minor usability improvements

    • 02-Feb-2021 (v1.0.11)
      • This version of the Data Mover includes a Command-Line Interface 
  • unimelb command-line clients
    • 15-Oct-2024 (v0.8.0)
      • Updated mfclient.jar library to 4.16.074.
      • Added Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) support.
      • Displays server and user (token) summary after successful authentication.
    • 06-Sep-2024 (v0.7.9)
      • unimelb-mf-download:
        • The behavior of the --overwrite option has been updated. It now only overwrites a destination file if it already exists and has a different size, rather than overwriting all existing files.
        • The description of the --csum-check option has been updated for clarity, particularly when used in combination with the --overwrite option.
    • 18-Jun-2024 (v0.7.8)
      • unimelb-mf-upload: --sync-delete-assets option is now working properly. It did not work because of a defect in asset.query service.
    • 14-Mar-2024 (v0.7.7)
      • unimelb-mf-upload/check/download tools have been enhanced to support for collection assets.
      • unimelb-mf-upload: --dest option now replaces --namespace option. --namespace option is deprecated.
      • unimelb-mf-upload: added --preserve-modified-time option to preserve local file mtime as asset mtime in Mediaflux.
    • 14-Feb-2024 (v0.7.6)
      • Improved query performance for asset namespace queries.
      • Improved query performance by utilising iterator for paginated queries.
    • 30-Sep-2023 (v0.7.5)
      • Fixed: leading & trailing whitespaces in file names were mistakenly trimmed
    • 26-Apr-2023 (v0.7.4)
      • Added check to exclude special files such as FIFO/Named Pipe
    • 18-Apr-2023 (v0.7.3)
      • Handle the access exception when accessing file size
    • 20-Feb-2023 (v0.7.2)
      • added switch to save local file attributes. 
    • 13-Dec-2022 (v0.7.1)
      • corrected typos in the help text 
      • enhance --level option to accept number range such as 1-3
    • 02-Dec-2022 (v0.7.0)
      • add option to sort the result newest to oldest
    • 17-Nov-2022 (v0.6.9)
      • print info when sum up total file size of a directory
      • disabled --aggregate-transmission and --split args.
      • Added option to save result to csv file.
      • corrected --level arg
      • Reformat command output
      • Refactor to use the new plugin service to list uploads.
    • 07-Oct-2022 (v0.6.8)
      • New CLI utility to find data has not been uploaded by Data Mover
      • Fixed unarchive option
      • convert to absolute path if the path exists 
      • wrapper scripts for unimelb-mf-instrument-upload-find
      • Add command to find DM instrument uploads.
    • 31-Jul 2022 (v0.6.7)
      • do not stop when fails to destroy asset namespace
    • 28-Jul-2022 (v0.6.6)
      • --sync-delete-assets now also delete empty asset namespaces that no longer exist locally
    • 25-May 2022 (v0.6.5)
      • Change to build tar.gz for mac and linux binary releases 
      • Improved retry to handle network errors.
    • 10-May-2022 (v0.6.4)
      • Fixed performance issues of unimelb-mf-upload and unimelb-mf-download. We strongly recommend you upgrade to this version because it will significantly improve the upload/download performance.
    • 25-Jun-2021 (v0.6.2)
      • Added options to unimelb-mf-upload to set the uploaded files to WORM (write once read many) state. See details here.
    • 25-May-2021 (v0.6.1)
      • Added support to specify Mediaflux server configuration and user credentials (and token) using system environment variables. See details here.
    • 10-May-2021 (v0.6.0)
      • Added --create-namespaces option to unimelb-mf-upload. If specified, create the destination asset namespace, specified by --namespace, if it does not exist, including any necessary but nonexistent parent namespaces.
    • 30-Apr-2021 (v0.5.9)
    • 21-Apr-2021 (v0.5.8)
      • Fixed the selection query in unimelb-mf-upload that could miss some symbolic link assets without asset type set.
    • 22-Jan-2021 (v0.5.7)
      • unimelb-mf-upload: fixed a bug that causes worker threads hang when accessing file/directory with trailing space in its name.
    • 15-Dec-2020 (v0.5.6)
      • Since the way to handle symbolic links in Mediaflux has changed after the recent server upgrade, all the unimelb-mf-* tools are updated to support new style of symbolic link assets in Mediaflux. To properly upload and download symbolic links, users are advised to upgrade to this version.