HSI Release Notes

Changes that are not transparent or not upwardly compatible are marked in red.

Version 2.8 (released 07/04/03)


Changes from 2.7 to 2.8 consisted of minor bug-fixes not relevant to NERSC users.

Version 2.7 (released 10/28/02)

NOTE: This work was funded by the PROBE and SCIDAC/SDM projects at Oak Ridge National Laboratory

New Features

  • GLOBUS GSI Authentication: Globus 2.0 certificates may be used by specifying "-A gsi" on the HSI command line, or as the default authentication method in the host-global or private .hsirc files. The grid-proxy-init command must be used to establish the user's globus identity prior to using HSI.
  • AutoScheduling: Not available yet
  • Support for HPSS.conf: Network options are now parsed from the standard HPSS.conf file. The hpss_netopt.conf file is no longer supported as of this version.
  • Server-side "cp": For "copy" operations that take place within a single HPSS storage subsystem, files are copied within the HPSS system without having to move data from HPSS to HSI buffers and then back to HPSS.
  • No-Stage option ("get","cp"): The "-S" option can be specified on get and cp commands to disable staging of the source file, in order to read directly from tape.
  • Support for HSI on Windows platforms: The non-DCE version of HSI can now be used on Windows platforms that have installed the CYGWIN environment. Cygwin is free for noncommercial use at http://www.cygwin.com.
  • Partial File Gets: For the get family of commands, the "-O' option can be used to perform random reads from HPSS and writes to a local file. A list of tuplets (source offset:sink offset:length) can also be specified in a file.
  • Restartable transfers: The -t command line option can be used on the get and put family of commands to cause transfers to be restarted at the point of a previous failure, without having to retransfer data that has already been successfully read or written.
  • "HERE document" syntax: For commands that specify a list of pathnames,sh-style (or ksh-style) here-document syntax can be used for the list of pathnames. For example:

    get file1 file2
    get file3

    can also be entered as:

    get file1 <<EOF
    file2
    file3
    <<EOF

    (Note: for HSI 2.7, this syntax is available for the following commands: get, chcos, stage; for subsequent versions, this facility will be added to the remaining commands).
  • Automatic logfile default reset to "none". The logfile Pathname can be controlled by the HSI_LOGFILE environment variable or can be disabled by setting HSI_LOGFILE=none. Due to the number of complaints about the default setting, it was changed to "none"
  • Support for Intel IA64 architecture: The Intel IA64 architecture is now supported for the Linux operating system
  • New hsi command line options: The -c and -O command line options were added to facilitate running hsi as a child process of another program
  • New commands added: lsjunctions can be used to list junctions defined by the HPSS administrator

Deprecated Features Removed

  • HPSS 4.1.1.3 and earlier: All code to deal with the 32-bit network address fields in HPSS 4.1.1.3 and earlier has been removed. Only systems at HPSS 4.1.1.4 and later are supported.
  • SEA Authentication: All code related to SEA authentication has been removed from HSI and its supporting libraries
  • HSI Server Port Change: Users with custom .hsirc files in their home directories should replace port 1219 with 1220 for SDSC's HPSS.
  • Support has been removed for the following operating systems: NeXT, Mac OSX Server (NOT Mac OSX), SunOS, AIX 3.2.5

Misc

  • Comment lines: lines beginning with a sharp (#) character are now treated as comments lines both interactively and within IN files
  • Several problems have been corrected in this version, including:
    • EIO errors when storing piped files (without using the firewall command)
    • Multithreading problem in the non-DCE client API message functions
    • Inter-HPSS copy problems which resulted in hung transfers
    • prime notation pathname expansion problem
    • umask problem which resulted in incorrect permissions being set on files and directories created in HPSS

Version 2.6.3

  • Change transfers that make use of store-and-forward I/O over private data socket (mainly WAN transfers) to use new extended I/O calls.

Version 2.6.1, 2.6.2

  • Automatic logfile creation at HSI startup. The logfile Pathname can be controlled by the HSI_LOGFILE environment variable or can be disabled by setting "HSI_LOGFILE=none" (HSI environment variables are described in "HSI Settings"). HSI now automatically creates a logfile in your home directory, unless you disable it by setting the HSI_LOGFILE environment variable as follows: 

    For csh:
  setenv HSI_LOGFILE none
  
For ksh or bash:
  export HSI_LOGFILE=none

  • New format for hsirc file to support "-s site" option on the HSI command line, and for the "-s site" option on the "open" command, in support of the multi-HPSS feature.

Version 2.6

  • Space preceding and following the colon ":" in the local : HPSS pathname syntax is now required.
  • Add optional logical drive syntax for support of multiple concurrent connections to HPSS systems.
  • Changes for HPSS 4.2 and 4.3. Concurrent support for all HPSS release levels using runtime conversion functions for structures that changed from HPSS 4.1.x to 4.2.
[No release info will be posted for HSI versions prior to 2.6, as it's mostly of historical interest only]