SFB 1102 storage

This document describes the shared data storage for members of the Sonderforschungsbereich 1102 "Information Density and Linguistic Encoding".

If you are looking for the Git repository, please see here.

Web interface

The web interface offers an easy method for file access, account configuration and file sharing.

• https://www.hidrive.strato.com

• The "public" folder is readable and writable by everybody.
• The "user" folder is readable and writable only by you and nobody else, unless you explicitly share a file or folder.
• If you wish to exchange data with other people, please see "File Sharing" below.

Advanced access

For advanced features such as group access it is helpful to use a graphical SFTP client such as Filezilla, which is available for all platforms.

• SFTP server name:

  sftp.hidrive.strato.com

• You may open multiple Filezilla windows, one for your user account and one for each group account you intend to use.

• To make logins more comfortable you may generate and upload an SSH-key to your account via the Web interface (see above) -> Einstellungen -> Kontoverwaltung -> Open SSH Schluessel.

• Please find a detailed step by step manual on Filezilla and Strato (please use SFTP) here.

• Please find information on how to create an SSH-key pair here.

• Note that direct SSH shell access is not possible.

Expert access

You may access the storage using advanced access methods like command line scp, sshfs or rsync/ssh. Please see here.

User account

If you require a user account or a group account for yourself, a project partner, a student assistant, or your group,

• please contact your local contact person.

• Please provide your (or the recipient's, respectively) full name, email address, project, and name of PI.

File sharing

Group folders

• Every user has read and write access to the "public" folder. Feel free to put all data here which may be useful to everybody, e.g. corpora.
• Every group has been given a group account, which you may share between members of your group.
• Upon request you may be given additional group accounts, e.g. for dedicated sub projects or for sharing data with external project partners.
• Every user who possesses the username/password (or more comfortably, the SSH-key!) to a group account will have read and write access to the files and folders of that group account.
• We assume most people will mostly use a group account and not their personal account.

• Feel free to share your group account with project partners or student assistants, at your own discretion.

Individual / global file sharing

If you wish to give read access of your folders/files to individual users who do not share a group account with you, e.g. students or external project partners, you may do this as follows:

• Open the web interface (see above).
• Browse to the file/folder you wish to share, right click and select "Freigeben und teilen".

• You must set a validity period. Please be aware that the default values are 10 days and 5 downloads.

• You may optionally set a password.

If you wish to give write access of a folder to individual users who do not share a group account with you, e.g. students or external project partners, you may do this as follows:

• Open the web interface (see above).
• Browse to the folder you wish to receive files in, right click and select "Upload einstellen".

• You must set a validity period. Please be aware that the default values are 10 days and 5 uploads.

• You may optionally set a password.
• This method is particularly useful for homework submissions, possibly with a deadline.

You may share the same folder for read and write access to freely exchange files with other users.

You may also receive files sent to you via email attachment as a mail upload as follows:

• Open the web interface (see above).
• Browse to the folder you wish to receive files in, right click and select "Mailupload einstellen".
• You may select oen subfolder per sender and a security code for the email address.
• This method is particularly useful for homework submissions, possibly with a deadline or any other kind of purposes, e.g. automatic file generation/reception, i.e. a cron job may send a result file which is automagically saved into your storage folder.

You may find an overview of all your sharing settings in the top row of the web interface file browser in the "Freigabe" menu.

Storage quota

By default every user and group can store up to 100GB of data. If you require a higher quota, please contact your local contact person.

Backup

By default all data is backed up once a day. Please do not change this setting in your account preferences.

You may access a backup of a file/folder as follows:

• Open the web interface (see above).
• Browse to the folder you wish to restore files/folders from, right click and select "Backup-Versionen".
• You may download backup versions of your files/folders as a ZIP archive.

Security / Privacy

• It is recommended to access data exclusively via encrypted Secure Shell, SSH, or via HTTPS/SSL.

• Please be aware that the data storage is for work related data only. Privacy cannot be expected.

• There exists administrator access for each account, which is primarily used for backup and quota purposes.
• A PI may authorise a change of ownership of an account should an exceptional necessity arise.

Performance

We measured performance to be roughly 25-35MB/s downstream (Strato -> UdS) and 3-5MB/s upstream (UdS -> Strato). 3MB/s is equivalent to ~250GB/24h.

• If you encounter performance issues, do contact us via your local contact person.

• For very large amounts of data there is a possibility to send this via USB hard drives to Strato directly, please contact your local contact person.

Frequently asked questions

• Please direct all questions to your local contact person.

• You may want to have a look at our storage provider's FAQ:

  https://www.strato.de/faq/path/413.html

• You may find that there is a web interface option to create GIT repositories. Do no use this, it is broken. Use the SFB1102 GIT repository instead.

• There exists no Dropbox like client which allows for offline syncing of files. The primary function of this storage is to allow data exchange between users and groups. If you need to synchronise data between different machines/laptops you may want to aquire a Dropbox single user account for yourself. Please contact your PI in regard to the cost. If you are an expert user, you may want to have a look at unison over sshfs in the expert section.

• There exists client software for iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Please use at your own risk.
• There exists client software for Windows and MacOS. Do not use it, it is quite horrible. Use Filezilla instead, see above.

• Under certain circumstances the web interface does not display files. You may need to minimise the folder view in the left pan to make the files view in the right pane visible. We filed a bug report with our storage provider on this. As a workaround you may use the beta version of the new web interface https://beta.hidrive.com in the meantime.

• In the web interface it is not possible to switch language to anything else but German. We filed a bug report with our storage provider on this.