Install JASMIN XFC client

XFC client install

In order to initiate and manage your usage of the XFC (transfer cache) service, you need to use the XFC client.

Once set up, you don't need to use this client to read/write data to XFC storage itself, but you can use it to interrogate the system to find out what data you have stored and how much of your quota(s) you are using.

The following steps should be used to create a python virtual environment and pip to install the xfc client:

NOTE: do these steps on one of the sci (not xfer) servers:

1. Log into one of the sci machines: e.g. sci1.jasmin.ac.uk (1 - 8 is available)
2. The xfc client can be used either with Python 2.7 or with Python 3 using jaspy.
   Python 2: (now deprecated)
       Setup a virtual environment without site-packages in your home directory: virtualenv ~/xfc_venv
   Python 3: (preferred)
       Load the jaspy module:  module load jaspy
       Setup a virtual environment in your home directory: python -m venv ~/xfc_venv
3. The following steps for Python 2 and Python 3 are now the same.
4. Activate the virtual environment: source ~/xfc_venv/bin/activate
5. Download the client software using git to your home directory:
   git clone https://github.com/cedadev/xfc_client.git
6. pip install the xfc client pip install -e ~/xfc_client
7. Use xfc on the command line xfc -h

Users who already have a Python virtual environment can skip step 2 and install into an existing virtual environment, for either Python 2.7 or Python 3.  The recommendation for users using NLA, XFC and JDMA is to create a single virtual environment to install all 3 client applications into.

The xfc client can be used without activating the python virtualenv by adding the path to the xfc client to the $PATH$ environment variable:

1. export PATH="$PATH:~/xfc_venv/bin"
2. echo 'export PATH="$PATH:~/xfc_venv/bin"' >> "$HOME/.bashrc"

The xfc client can now be used by invoking xfc from the command line without activating the virtualenv.  Python 3 users will have to load jaspy using the command module load jaspy 

For instructions on how to use the xfc client, see the article  JASMIN Transfer Cache (XFC).