Transferring Data with iCommands and Command Line¶

iCommands is a collection of tools developed by the iRODS project. iRODS is the technology that supports the CyVerse Data Store. Using iCommands is the most flexible way to interact with the Data Store.

This section will cover the basics of iCommands installation and use.

Note

Versions 4.2.8 and older work best with the Data Store.
This is a command line tool, operated in a terminal.
There is no support for Windows OS and PowerShell so we recommend using Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

iCommands Installation for Linux¶

On a Linux OS you can use a package manager to install iCommands in the terminal. Instructions for configuring the iRODS repositories in Linux can be be found on the iRODS Packages webpage. You'll need to lock the iRODS packages to version 4.2.8 before installing the iCommands package.

CentOS:

The iCommands package has dependencies found in the EPEL repo, so this repository needs to be configured as well.

Configure the epel-release and irods repositories, pin the iCommands version to 4.2.8, and use yum to install the iCommands package irods-icommands.

sudo yum install epel-release
sudo rpm --import https://packages.irods.org/irods-signing-key.asc
wget -qO - https://packages.irods.org/renci-irods.yum.repo \
  | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/renci-irods.yum.repo
sudo yum versionlock add irods-*-4.2.8
sudo yum install irods-icommands

If that does not work, you can install an older version of iCommands, 4.1.12, from RENCI's website.

sudo yum install \
  https://files.renci.org/pub/irods/releases/4.1.12/centos7/irods-icommands-4.1.12-centos7-x86_64.rpm

Ubuntu 18.04:

Configure the repository, pin the iCommands version to 4.2.8, and use apt to install the iCommands package irods-icommands.

wget -qO - https://packages.irods.org/irods-signing-key.asc | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.irods.org/apt/ $(lsb_release -sc) main" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/renci-irods.list
sudo apt-get update
cat <<'EOF' | sudo tee > /etc/apt/preferences.d/irods
Package: irods-*
Pin: version 4.2.8
Pin-Priority: 1001
EOF
sudo apt install irods-icommands

Ubuntu 20.04:

There is no iCommands 4.2.8 package for Ubuntu 20.04, but the 18.04 packages works as long as the package libssl1.0.0 can be installed.

Configure the bionic-security and irods repositories, pin the iCommands version to 4.2.8, and use apt to install the iCommands package irods-icommands.

echo "deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-security main" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bionic-security.list
wget -qO - https://packages.irods.org/irods-signing-key.asc | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.irods.org/apt/ bionic main" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/renci-irods.list
sudo apt update
cat <<'EOF' | sudo tee > /etc/apt/preferences.d/irods
Package: irods-*
Pin: version 4.2.8
Pin-Priority: 1001
EOF
sudo apt install irods-icommands

Arm64/Aarch64:

A CyVerse community user compiled i-commands for Raspberry Pi (and tested in NVIDIA Jetsons): https://github.com/jmscslgroup/libpanda/blob/master/scripts/irods-icommands-debs.tgz

wget https://github.com/jmscslgroup/libpanda/raw/master/scripts/irods-icommands-debs.tgz
tar zxvf irods-icommands-debs.tgz
cd irods-icommands-debs/
./install.sh

iCommands Installation for Mac OS X¶

iRODS doesn't currently support Mac OS X, but CyVerse has built an installer for it.

Download the CyVerse-specific Mac OS iCommands Download.
Open the file by locating it in your Finder; right-click to run the installer. You may get a security warning noting the file is from an "unidentified developer." You may bypass this warning by going to 'System Preferences', selecting the 'Security & Privacy' menu, and clicking the 'Open Anyway' button to proceed.
Follow the prompts to begin the installation. You will need to know the administrator password to install new software on your computer.

Note

Newer Mac OS X now ships with zsh as its default shell rather than bash.

The installer will attempt to write some environmental variables to the .bashrc file which for zsh is called the .zshrc.

By default, this installation will place iCommands in your system PATH so you should be ready to run iCommands immediately at the terminal.

If this does not happen (i.e., you get an error when trying to run iinit), you can add the iCommands path by editing your .zshrc file:

# add iCommands Path
export PATH="/Applications/icommands/:$PATH"
export IRODS_PLUGINS_HOME=/Applications/icommands/plugins/

and then in terminal source the file source ~/.zshrc.

iCommands First-time Configuration¶

Note

If using iCommands in an HPC environment, which already has iCommands installed, run the module load irods command to get access to iRODS iCommands.

Once iCommands is installed and in the system PATH, these instructions apply at a terminal in Mac OS X and Linux systems.

Open a terminal
Type iinit command to start the configuration process. When prompted, enter the values shown below as comments in the example code block.

CyVerse Data Store configuration:

host name	port #	username	zone	password
data.cyverse.org	1247	CyVerse UserID	iplant	CyVerse Password

!!! Note

   You can reconfigure iCommands for other iRODS zones by changing your environment file.

Verify that your iCommands installation works and is properly configured using the ils command to list the contents of your Data Store home directory.

ils /iplant/home/your_home_directory
  file1
  file2
  file3
  C- /iplant/home/your_home_directory/analyses
  C- /iplant/home/your_home_directory/another_folder

Anonymous Access to the CyVerse Data Store¶

You can access public data in the CyVerse Data Store with iCommands using:

Username: anonymous
Password: <leave blank>

Upload Files/Folders from Local Computer to Data Store¶

Warning

When uploading your data to the Data Store, you should not upload files/folders with names containing spaces (e.g., experiment one.fastq) or special characters (e.g., ~ `` ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) + = { } [ ] | : ; " ' < > , ? / and \).

The Apps on the Discovery Environment and most command line applications will typically not tolerate these characters.

For long file/folder names, we recommend the use of underscores (e.g., experiment_one.fastq) instead of spaces.

See the full iCommands iput documentation for more information.

Upload a directory using the iput command. Remember, the -r flag is used to recursively upload a directory, so omit the -r flag if you are uploading a single file.

iput -rPT /local_directory /iplant/home/cyverse_username/destination_folder
# This command will output the progress as it uploads your local directory

There are several optional arguments that the upload iCommand iput can take:

iput -r  # for recursive transfer of directories and their contents

iput -P  # to display the progress of the upload

iput -f  # to force the upload and overwrite

iput -T  # to renew socket connection after 10 mins (this may help connections
         # that are failing due to some connection/firewall settings)

Download Files/Folders from Data Store to Local Computer¶

See the full iCommands iget documentation for more information.

Download a file using the iget command. Remember, the -r flag is used to recursively upload a directory, so omit the -r flag if you are uploading a single file.

iget -PT /iplant/home/cyverse_username/target_file /local_destination
# This command will output the progress as it downloads to your local machine

There are several optional arguments that the upload iCommand iget can take:

iget -r  # for recursive transfer of directories and their contents

iget -P  # to display the progress of the download

iget -f  # to force the download and overwrite

iget -T  # to renew socket connection after 10 mins (this may help connections
         # that are failing due to some connection/firewall settings)

NetCDF iCommands¶

For the Linux distributions, there are three extra iCommands that support common NetCDF operations:

inc performs data operations on a list of NetCDF files
incarch archives an open-ended time series data
incattr performs operation on attributes of NetCDF files

Each of these commands accepts the -h command line option. When a command is called with this option, it displays the command's help documentation. Please see this help documentation for more information.

Note

CyVerse does not currently support the NetCDF iCommands.

Additional Frequently Used iCommands¶

In addition to the commands above, there are several frequently used iCommands, most of which follow the Linux paradigm:

ihelp: Prints helpful information about all iCommands
ipwd: Print current directory
imkdir: Create a directory
icd: Change directory
irsync: Sync local directory with iRODS directory

Last update: 2023-11-30