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Site Transfer Software (STS)

STS is a utility used for transmitting data over wide-area networks with the following priorities:

  • In-order delivery
  • Confirmed transfer via hash validation
  • Efficient use of bandwidth using HTTP and gzip compression
  • Bandwidth sharing among configured groups of files to avoid starvation

Usage

$ sts -help
  -conf string
      Configuration file path
  -debug
      Log program flow
  -help
      Print the help message
  -loop
      Run in a loop, i.e. don't exit until interrupted
  -mode string
      Mode: "out", "in", "auto" (default "auto")

NOTE: Specifying -mode auto (or if -mode omitted since auto is the default) will use the configuration file to determine which mode(s) to run. If only an OUT block is present then it will run in out mode. If only an IN block is present then it will run in in mode. If both exist then both are run.

Example Configuration

Below is an example configuration file. The "outgoing" and "incoming" blocks do not have to be included in the same configuration file. In fact, by default if -conf is not used, STS will look in $STS_HOME (or $PWD if not defined) for sts.{mode}.yaml (or sts.yaml if running -mode auto).

# OUTGOING CONFIGURATION
OUT:
  dirs: # Outgoing directory configuration; relative to $STS_HOME or directory of configuration file if not absolute
    cache : .sts     # Used to store queue cache(s)
    out   : data/out # Directory to watch for files to send; appends "/{target name}"
    logs  : data/log # Root directory for logging
    logs-out  : out  # Appended to root logs dir for logging of files sent (DEFAULT: outgoing_to); appends /{target}
    logs-flow : flow # Appended to root logs for error/info/debug messages (DEFAULT: messages)
  sources: # Supports multiple sources where omitted entries will inherit from previous sources hierarchically
    - name          : ...   # Name of the source (used by receiver)
      out-dir       : /...  # Override the global output directory setting
      log-dir       : /...  # Override the global log directory setting
      threads       : 8     # Maximum number of concurrent HTTP connections
      bin-size      : 10MB  # The generally-desired size for a given HTTP request (BEFORE any compression)
      compress      : 4     # Use GZIP compression of level 0-9 (0 = no compression, 9 = best but slowest)
      min-age       : 15s   # How old a file must be before being added to the "outgoing" queue
      max-age       : 12h   # How old a file can be before getting logged as "stale" (remains in the queue)
      cache-age     : 24h   # Interval at which to check files in the cache
      scan-delay    : 30s   # How long to wait between scans of the outgoing directory
      timeout       : 30m   # The HTTP timeout for a single request
      stat-payload  : false # Whether or not to log each payload's throughput stats
      stat-interval : 5m    # How often to log throughput statistics
      poll-delay    : 5s    # How long to wait after file sent before final validation
      poll-interval : 1m    # How long to wait between polling requests
      poll-attempts : 10    # How many times to "poll" for the successful reception of a file before re-sending
      target: # Target-specific configuration
        name          : ...      # Name of the target
        http-host     : ...:1992 # Target host, including port
        # If target not setup for HTTPS, remove or comment out the line below:
        http-tls-cert : conf/server.pem  # Public server certificate path; relative to $STS_HOME or $PWD if not absolute
      tags: # Tags are for configuration based on file patterns (omitted attributes are inherited)
        - pattern   : DEFAULT # The file "tag" pattern
          priority  : 0       # Relative importance (higher the number, greater the importance)
          order     : fifo    # File order (fifo (first in, first out) or none)
          delete    : true    # Whether or not to delete files after reception confirmation
          method    : http    # Transfer method ("http", "disk", or "none")
      include-hidden : false  # Whether or not to include "hidden" files
      include: # Regular expression pattern(s) as white list for files to send
        - ...
      ignore: # Regular expression pattern(s) as black list for files NOT to send
        - ...
      group-by : ^([^\.]*)  # How to group files for bandwidth sharing


# INCOMING CONFIGURATION
IN:
  sources: # Only accept requests from sources identified in the list below
    - ...
  keys: # Only accept requests with one of the keys from the list below
    - ...
  dirs: # Incoming directory configuration; relative to $STS_HOME or $PWD if not absolute
    stage : data/stage # Directory to stage data as it comes in; appends "/{source name}"
    final : data/in    # Final location for incoming files; appends "/{source name}"
    logs  : data/log   # Root directory for logging
    logs-in   : in   # Appended to root logs dir for logging of files sent (DEFAULT: incoming_from); appends /{source}
    logs-flow : flow # Appended to root logs for error/info/debug messages (DEFAULT: messages)
  server: # Server configuration.
    http-port     : 1992 # What port to listen on
    # HTTPS can be disabled by removing or commenting out the following two lines:
    http-tls-cert : conf/server.pem # Public server certificate path; relative to $STS_HOME or $PWD if not absolute
    http-tls-key  : conf/server.key # Private server key; relative to $STS_HOME or $PWD if not absolute
    compress      : 4 # Use GZIP compression of level 0-9 (0 = no compression, 9 = best but slowest) on response payloads

Definitions

Go (aka Golang)

An open-source programming language developed by Google. STS is written solely in Go and compiled to a single executable.

Thread

A Go routine.

Queue Cache

A data store (currently kept in memory and cached in JSON format to disk after each scan) to manage files in the outgoing queue. It contains a file's path, size, and mod time. Its purpose is to keep track of files found but not fully sent and validated such that on a crash recovery, files can be appropriately resent without duplication.

Bin

A bin is the payload of data pushed via HTTP to the configured target. A bin is composed of N files or file parts up to the configured bin size (before compression).

Stage Area

Configured directory where files are received and reconstructed before being moved to the final configured location.

Start-up

If STS is configured to send, the first thing it will do is check the cache to see if any files are already in the queue from last run. If so, a request is made to the target to find out what "partials" exist and corresponding companion metadata is returned. From this, STS can determine which files are partially sent already and which ones need to be polled for validation. Some of these might have already been fully received and some not at all. STS will handle both of these cases to avoid duplicate transfers.

Following the outgoing recovery logic, four components are started for managing the outgoing flow: Watcher, Queue, Sender, and Validator. A similar set of components will be started for any additionally configured source + target. Each source + target has its own configuration block. In send mode STS will also use a configurable number of threads used for making concurrent HTTP requests to the configured target.

If STS is configured to run as a receiver, an HTTP Server is started and file reception is handed off to the Stager which handles file validation and moving to the "final" directory.

Logical Flow

  1. Source Watcher: Files found in configured watch directory are cached in memory (and on disk) after computing (in parallel) each file's MD5 and passed to the Queue.

If the program crashes unexpectedly, STS will use the queue cache to perform a recovery procedure on next run that will pick up where it left off without sending duplicate data.

  1. Source Queue: Files received from Watcher are sorted in order of configured priority and/or in-order delivery. It will output single file chunks no larger than the configured payload (aka "bin") size and will rotate between groups of similar files (based on configurable pattern match) of the same priority in order to avoid starvation.

  2. Source Sender: Does these activities in parallel:

    1. Construct "bin" until full (or until input file stream is stagnant for a second)
    2. POST "bin" to target HTTP server, optionally compressing the payload
    3. Log successfully sent files and pass these to the Validator

  3. Source Validator: Builds a batch of files to validate based on configurable time interval and makes a request to the target host to confirm files sent have been validated and finalized. Files that fail validation are removed from the cache such the Watcher will pick them up again. Files that pass validation are removed if configured to do so. After a configurable number of poll attempts do not yield success, files are treated the same as if they had failed validation originally.

  4. Target HTTP Server: Receives POSTed "bin" from source host and writes data and companion metadata file to configured Stager.

  5. Target Stager: As streams of file parts are received from the HTTP Server, they are efficiently written to their file counterparts with a ".part" extension to indicate the file is not yet complete. Once the last part is written (mutex locks are used to avoid conflict by multiple threads) the file is renamed to remove the previously added ".part" extension and its MD5 hash is computed to make sure it matches the one stored in the "companion" file (.cmp extension). If the file matches AND its predecessor (if there is one) has also been received, it is moved to the "final" directory.