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The MetaArray

The MetaArray is a group of multicore, multiraid, high performance nodes which provide computational and data storage/hosting services for MetaARPA members. The current disk quota for each user is 800 GB and will likely increase with time.

Acceptable Use Policy

Users of the MetaArray must agree to abide by the MetaArray Acceptable Use Policy

Getting Started

To enable your access to ma.sdf.org, run 'metaarray' at the shell. This will first generate a random login password followed by a random database password sent via local e-mail if you have a DBA membership. To connect, use 'ssh ma.sdf.org' (port 22 or 8080). Once you are connected, you can change your password with the 'passwd' command. If you ever forget your password, just run 'metaarray' again from any of the regular nodes of the SDF cluster.

Disk Layout

The MetaArray Logical Volume spans multiple Volume Groups across multiple Physical Volumes which are organized as multiple disk drives organized in multiple hardware RAID level 5 groups. To the user, this all appears to be under one contiguous file system: /meta

The user directory structure is as follows: 

  •  /meta/initial/user           (home directory, considered private)

  •  /meta/www/initial/user       (web directory, considered public served via http)

  •  /meta/log                    (person website access log)

  •  /meta/mail/user              (user's mailbox - see the Maildir tutorial)

    • Executables and Packages

    Packages on the MetaArray are managed with pkgsrc and yum. Nearly any program or package can be installed by making a request on the regular nodes of the SDF cluster via the 'bboard' REQUESTS.

    The package directory structure is as follows: 

  •  /bin, /usr/bin          (yum repo destination directories)

  •  /usr/pkg/bin            (pkgsrc destination directories)

  •  /usr/local/bin          (MetaArray specific utilities)

    • Services and features

    The MetaArray includes all features of the MetaARPA membership. However, some SDF specific utilities may not be available on the MetaArray because it is designed to be isolated from the SDF cluster. Some MetaArray specific services must be manually configured by the user. 

  •  screen, tmux     Terminal managers 

  •  cron             Use 'crontab -e' to edit your crontab

  •  mkhomepg         Use 'mkhomepg -t' on the SDF Cluster to toggle website hosting
                   'mkhomepg' on the MetaArray will set secure perms for /meta/www

  •  setvmail         Put '$LOGNAME@ma.sdf.org' in your .forward on the SDF Cluster 
                    Your default email address is $LOGNAME@SDF.ORG

  •  webmail          Be sure to forward your mail, login via https://ma.sdf.org

  •  IMAP             imap(143) and imaps(993) address is ma.sdf.org

  •  X11              Connect with either ssh -X or ssh -Y to ma.sdf.org

  •  Port forwarding  (via SSH)

  •  startsql         MySQL database (with DBA membership)

    • Personal Website Hosting

    To host your personal website on the MetaArray, please do the following:

  • run 'mkhomepg' on the MetaArray. This creates the $HOME/html symlink and sets initial permissions.
  • upload your site to $HOME/html on the MetaArray.
  • run 'mkhomepg' again on the MetaArray. This sets proper permissions on your content.
  • run 'mkhomepg -t' on the SDF cluster to toggle your site to the MetaArray

    It may take up to 10 minutes for DNS to update locally; however your ISP DNS server may cache this data for up to 12 hours so you won't see the change immediately. Use the "host" command on the cluster to see if DNS has changed, and "lynx" on the cluster to verify that the site loads: then be patient as DNS changes propagate.

    * The DOCROOT for your directory defaults to no-read access, so you must have an index.html. Directory listings will work on subdirs within the DOCROOT. You can defeat this by running 'chmod g+r $HOME/html'

    * https through a self signed certificate is only available to personal URLs under *.sdf.org

    SDF Nextcloud

    SDF makes available an Nextcloud instance at https://ma.sdf.org/nc/.

    To initialize your login, go to https://ma.sdf.org/nc/, click "Forgot password?", and enter your SDF username.

    In order to connect to your instance from a client, the server should be set to https://ma.sdf.org/nc/. (the client will probably complain for the *.sdf.org SSL certificate, but that's fine)

    Using SDF Nextcloud on ShareX

    If you'd like to use SDF's Nextcloud as a destination for ShareX then follow the steps below:

    note: This tutorial was written for 10.1

  • Configure ShareX Destination for SDF Nextcloud
  • Open the ShareX application window
  • Click on Destinations
  • Click on Destination Settings
  • Select on the left pane, Nextcloud (under File uploaders)

  • Enter:
  • Host: https://ma.sdf.org/nc
  • Username: your sdf_nc login
  • Password: your sdf_nc password
  • Path: /foo

    Place a check next to:

  • Create shareable URL (Optional)
  • Ignore invalid SSL certificate (Required)

    Close the settings window

    Select from the menu Image Uploader - File Uploader - Nextcloud

    $Id: metaarray.html,v 1.40 2022/12/03 16:44:05 smj Exp $

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