At IU, how do I use SFTP or SCP to access my MDSS account?

Note: For information about other methods of accessing the MDSS, see At IU, how do I access the MDSS?

To use an SFTP or SCP client with the Massive Data Storage Service (MDSS) at Indiana University, connect to the following address:

Note: Graphical SCP clients such as WinSCP, which rely on the existence of services other than SCP, will not work with MDSS. If you need a graphical client, use an SFTP client.

The default directory will be your MDSS home directory (normally /hpss/u/s/username). Files you create in this directory will be assigned a default class of service. If your files are too large for this class of service, you can switch to class of service 2 or class of service 3 by changing to another directory:

• To change to class of service 2, prepend /cos2 to your current directory (e.g., /cos2/hpss/u/s/username).
  
  
• To change to class of service 3, prepend /cos3 to your current directory (e.g., /cos3/hpss/u/s/username).

The contents of the directory will appear the same in either case, but writing files to the different directories will create files in the selected class of service.

Most SFTP clients will not report your current directory as /hpss/u/s/username in the default case, but will instead report it as /cos1/hpss/u/s/username. It's fine to leave the /cos1 there, unless you want to use a different class of service; in that case, remove the prefix /cos1 before using a different prefix.

If you frequently change class of service with this method, you can create links in your home directory to make changing directories easier. For example, in SFTP, you could do the following:

While you can create the link only with SFTP, you can use it with SCP as well: