So, we’ve talked about this since and I am taking a crack at including the SFTP 
feature into PGA. This seems like an ideal framework to include: 
https://github.com/thephpleague/flysystem-sftp 
<https://github.com/thephpleague/flysystem-sftp>

I’m looking for the part of the application where the input and output types 
are defined — I’m guessing we would do this as another “type” like “URI” or 
“STRING.” Can someone give me a good place to start?

Thanks,
J

> On Sep 1, 2016, at 4:32 PM, Suresh Marru <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Hi Jarett,
> 
> We have some interest from who were looking for task to contribute to 
> Airavata. We can probably motivate interest on this task. Can you please 
> write a detailed use cases clearly articulating the user sequence of actions 
> you would like to see?  We can then over lay that with Airavata architecture, 
> break it down into small sprints and work through it. 
> 
> Thanks,
> Suresh
> 
>> On Sep 1, 2016, at 4:06 PM, Jarett DeAngelis <[email protected] 
>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Suresh,
>> 
>> Just wanted to follow up on this: I see what you mean re: the file picker 
>> connected to a remote node. So, given that what we want to do is allow users 
>> to both access shared data (like databases, for example, for applications 
>> like blastn) and read and write data to their home folders, what do you 
>> think is the best course of action?
>> 
>> I’m also curious what existing use cases you’re seeing that make the gateway 
>> useful currently, *without* access to permission-controlled user 
>> directories. How are people using it now?
>> 
>> Ultimately, fixes for this situation that would help us would include:
>> 1) A file picker for directories *local* to the PGA gateway (because we 
>> could put shared resources like databases in a directory like this)
>> 2) The ability to SCP/SFTP, from the gateway, in and out of user-permission 
>> space, using the credentials entered into the gateway to log in.
>> 
>> So, some questions:
>> Do you see either of these as being implementable in the short term?
>> Are these on your radar for the Airavata team to implement themselves?
>> 
>> Thanks!
>> 
>> Jarett
>> 
>> 
>>> On Aug 12, 2016, at 4:17 PM, Suresh Marru <[email protected] 
>>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Aug 12, 2016, at 3:23 PM, Jarett DeAngelis <[email protected] 
>>>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Hey Suresh,
>>>> 
>>>> Thanks for starting this conversation!
>>>> 
>>>> What do you think the users’ “extra one time configuration” would look 
>>>> like?
>>>> 
>>>> One of the things I was thinking about was how the gateway can do things 
>>>> like pass a path to the compute node in order to find files. Is it 
>>>> possible for the gateway to produce a “file picker” sort of dialog based 
>>>> on what it can see in a path you give it? It runs jobs as its service 
>>>> account when Airavata interacts with it. You might not have to have it run 
>>>> *as* the user in order to produce a directory listing for acquiring and 
>>>> depositing files, if the user changes the permissions on a certain set of 
>>>> directories such that the service account can read/write to them.
>>>> 
>>>> Does this make sense? Would it be a large development effort to get this 
>>>> additional bit of UI functionality? Obviously part of the purpose of a 
>>>> science gateway is to avoid having to dig around on the command line 
>>>> sorting out what files are where.
>>> 
>>> Hi Jaratt,
>>> 
>>> After thinking through this scenario, I think users providing a path to a 
>>> permissible users space is a low hanging fruit. Doing a file picker (which 
>>> implies reading remote files) will be an involving task since PGA does not 
>>> talk to remote server directly but has to broker the file listings through 
>>> Airavata. Make sense? 
>>> 
>>> Suresh
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Thanks!
>>>> Jarett
>>>> 
>>>>> On Aug 8, 2016, at 2:17 PM, Suresh Marru <[email protected] 
>>>>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Hi Jarett,
>>>>> 
>>>>> To give some context, let me start refreshing the security(authentication 
>>>>> and authorization aspects) within Airavata. 
>>>>> 
>>>>> There are clearly two distinct layers, users securely interacting with 
>>>>> Airavata and Airavata able to security interact with storage and compute 
>>>>> resources. The former interactions are facilitated with WSO2 IS and later 
>>>>> managed by Airavata Credential Store. For your use case we need to 
>>>>> brainstorm on how we bridge the two. You can read more about Credential 
>>>>> Store here [1]. 
>>>>> 
>>>>> If I am understanding your scenario, users authenticate on PGA with the 
>>>>> credentials in LDAP/FreeIPA (brokered through WSO2 IS). Airavata then 
>>>>> allows them to use compute resources managed by roles in the IS (in the 
>>>>> future we might replace this with more fine grained group management). 
>>>>> All authenticated and authorized users can interact with storage and 
>>>>> compute resources which the gateway administers have enabled them by 
>>>>> retrieving the credentials stored in the credential store. Currently only 
>>>>> administrators generate and configure these credentials. We have 
>>>>> considered power users (with appropriate role privileges also using 
>>>>> credential store directly). 
>>>>> 
>>>>> If your use case is for every user, then we need to essentially have them 
>>>>> delegate access to their personal storage space. Access protocol is not 
>>>>> not too much of an issue to support, how seamlessly and security we can 
>>>>> have users delegate their storage credentials is a challenge. Its not a 
>>>>> major development effort, but its more of a usability issue. If we need 
>>>>> to do it in a good secure way, users should be prepared to do extra one 
>>>>> time configuration. If we need to have users do nothing, then that will 
>>>>> lead to less secure options. 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Can we outline from a usability standout what will be a acceptable 
>>>>> credential delegation (access to their storage space) and build from 
>>>>> there? 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>> Suresh
>>>>> 
>>>>> [1] - 
>>>>> https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/17379/ccgrid_2014_credential_store.pdf
>>>>>  
>>>>> <https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/17379/ccgrid_2014_credential_store.pdf>
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Aug 2, 2016, at 5:08 PM, Jarett DeAngelis <[email protected] 
>>>>>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> When the PGA gateway is dealing with something like getting files to and 
>>>>>> from user space (like an NFS share, for example), what is the canonical 
>>>>>> way of doing this? Since the gateway is running as the Apache service 
>>>>>> account, it does not have permissions on the user's directories. Is 
>>>>>> there something standard you can put into an application interface to 
>>>>>> let it get files back and forth? Like, some kind of spot for ssh/scp 
>>>>>> URIs, for example? I dunno, putting 
>>>>>> scp://user:password@host:~/path/to/directory 
>>>>>> <scp://user:password@host:~/path/to/directory> in for a path? Or some 
>>>>>> more nicely-designed file picker-type interface that uses the PGA user’s 
>>>>>> logged in credentials (in our case, from LDAP/FreeIPA)?
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Thanks in advance,
>>>>>> Jarett
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>> 
> 

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