I am using a z/OS java jar which requires a keystore and truststore file.
I have FTP'd all of the files to the z/OS Unix directory(Mainframe).
When executing the jar, I receive an "invalid keystore file format" error. When I use the keytool on my local machine on the keystore file, the command is successful. When using the keytool command on the remote (zOS Unix), I am getting the format error. The files are being transmitted in binary format.
Is there a particular way that I should be transmitting the file to MF Unix?
There are three primary way I use to transfer files to z/OS USS depending on whether I want conversion or not (from utf-8 to ibm-1047 for instance).
With conversion:
scp works and will translate the files characters while transferring. Note: this is an IBM behaviour that you do not normally see when transferring from distributed system to distributed system. It's really annoying.
ftp with ascii mode
Without Conversion:
ftp with transfer mode set to binary
sftp
Choose the option that makes the most sense based on the client in your environment.
Related
I get a valid connection with phpseclib but because of the server's requirements I must issue a change remote directory command, $sftp->chdir($dir="//ARTDONE.G9876TT1"), to this directory, (exact format, not the actual name). This change directory command works with Putty's psftp.exe as "CD //ARTDONE.G9876TT1" in windows and with WinSCP's "go to this folder GUI input" but not with PHPSECLIB's sftp object method. Is there something about this directory format that needs to change when using phpseclib? The error message is "permission denied", but I get that same message for any other navigation commands.
Is there a way to issue literal sftp commands with phpseclib sftp?
Or can I use $ssh->exec("CD //ARTDONE.G9876TT1") in some way within the $sftp object that I cannot currently imagine?
The phpseclib appends / to the path in SFTP::chdir call. I believe this is what your server does not like.
Note that SFTP does not even use the concept of a working directory. It's faked locally by phpseclib (and other clients like WinSCP or OpenSSH). So you do not really need to use SFTP::chdir. You might instead use absolute paths in all phpseclib API calls. Alternatively, just setting SFTP::pwd has the same effect as calling SFTP::chdir, except that you will bypass the validation that causes you the troubles.
Accessing z/OS Data Sets via SFTP/FTP
Appending a / surely breaks the access. The OP is accessing an IBM z/OS system running an SFTP server.
IBM z/OS
z/OS is kind a hybrid operating system having a traditional MVS based "kernel" (not really named "kernel" in the doc), and a XPG 4.2 compliant UNIX kernel running in parallel. The UINX side supports file systems with directories and files. The MVS side has a completely different "file system", based on data sets which are named in a non-hierarchal system.
The UNIX file system on z/OS
There is not much to say about the UNIX file system on z/OS. Is it XPG compliant, thus the usage is not different to any other UNIX lik system.
The MVS Data Sets on z/OS
As said above, there is the traditional MVS Data Set based "file system" on z/OS, which is quite different to much you know about files and directories on UNIX system.
Disk Space on z/OS is assigned to MVS data sets. Data sets are named using dot separates names, that can be up to 44 characters long. The parts between two dots can be up to 8 characters long.
Examples:
ARTDONE.G9876TT1
ARTDONE.NEXT.DATA.SET
ARTDONE.NEXT.ANOTHER.ONE
SYS1.LINKLIB
ZUSER.SOURCE.REXX
What seems to be a hierarchy in the first three examples, is not. They are unrelated from the physical point of view, though related in a logical.
Note: Slashed / are not valid in MVS data set names.
SFTP/FTP servers on z/OS
SFTP/FPT servers in z/OS mimic the client side view of directories and files when accessing MVS Data Sets in that the dots in the names are kind of treated like slashes in UNIX. I.e. they support pwd and cd based on the dots.
Example:
cd //ARTDONE.NEXT sets the current working directory to ARTDONE.NEXT. A ls the lists all data sets, of which the name starts with ARTDONE.NEXT, i.e.
ARTDONE.NEXT.DATA.SET
ARTDONE.NEXT.ANOTHER.ONE
but not ARTDONE.G9876TT1.
But how would the server know whether a client side "directory" access is meant to access the UNIX or the MVS data world? The // at the beginning of the parameter passed to the server indicates the server shall switch to the MVS data set world.
Conclusion
client side software should be careful when verifying paths that might be sent to z/OS servers. Accept // as a special indicator. Do not append / in all cases.
More Detailes
There is much more behind this topic than can be described here. Read IBM documentation on z/OS if interested. I would recommend Introduction to the New Mainframe: z/OS Basics as a starter.
I want to download a file from Mainframe server to Linux machine using SFTP command and want to preserve EOL. It seems that the actual file does not have EOL character, where as SFTP process adds EOL character while downloading it to Linux server.
Is there any option to download the file in Binary mode using SFTP command?
I tried to download data from Mainframe server using FTP and SFTP. FTP with Binary mode is preserving actual content of original file without any modification, whereas FTP with ASCII mode and SFTP commands are modifying the content of the file by adding EOL or any other special characters.
I got it worked by enabling binary mode of transfer in SFTP session:
ls /+mode=binary
The default was set to ASCII.
sftp> ls /+ /+/clientcp=ISO8859-1 /+/error.log /+/loglevel=I /+/mode=text /+/servercp=IBM-1047 /+/trim
sftp> bye
I am now able to match the size of file with FTP binary and SFTP binary.
I haven't had issues with binary files and sftp. If you want to download a text file, you should use scp, unless it's in ASCII, in which case I would think sftp should work fine.
Are you trying to download a file from the hierarchical file system or from a dataset? I don't think datasets are supported with sftp (you would use FTP for that or Secure FTP).
On z/OS there are basically three ways to move content based on your question. First is FTP, second is scp and the third is sftp.
Also, its important to identify which fileset you are trying to access; MVS or USS. MVS files are different than traditional *nix file systems. MVS files are generally fixed or variable in nature. As such, they do not rely on line terminators like \n or \r to terminate the line. The record length is available at the time of reading. USS files would have line terminators.
FTP is services are provided by a daemon that is part of the Communication Server product. It provides most modes of transfer as well as extensions to deal with platform specific items as they relate to the MVS name space. You can also access Unix files as well. Conversions like ASCII (IBM-1047 -> UTF-8) are supported or binary (just move the data and don't touch it).
scp is delivered as part of the OpenSSH implementation on z/OS and it always transfers in a character mode and will assume an encoding change to / from EBCDIC to ASCII. Its an unfortunate implementation but it is what it is. This is due to the fact that the native code page on z/OS in EBCDIC in some form. Don't expect transfers with scp to move data without conversion. Only files in the USS file system are accessible. No MVS datasets.
sftp uses the secure services of OpenSSH but acts like ftp. Depending on your client you can set the mode to transfer ascii (conversion) or binary. My client on Mac OS X will not allow ascii. Probably a client limitation. sftp also only allows you to move files that reside or are destined for the USS file domain.
To answer your question about binary in sftp the answer is yes, I use it frequently to move files to and from z/OS using binary to avoid automatic conversion. Make sure you are transferring using binary transfer and not ascii when using sftp.
I have a requirement to perform checksum (for data integrity) for SFTP. I was hoping this could be done during the SFTP file transfer - I realize this could be product dependent (FYI: using CLEO VLTrader), but was wondering if this is customary?
I am also looking for alternative data integrity checking options that are as good (or better) than using a checksum algorithm. Thanks!
With the SFTP, running over an encrypted SSH session, there's negligible chance the file contents could get corrupted while transferring. The SSH itself does data integrity verification.
So unless the contents gets corrupted, when reading the local file or writing the remote file, you can be pretty sure that the file was uploaded correctly, if no error is reported. That implies that a risk of data corruption as about the same as if you were copying the files between two local drives.
If you would not consider it necessary to verify data integrity after copying the files from one local drive to another, then I do not think, you need to verify integrity after an SFTP transfer, and vice versa.
If you want to test explicitly anyway:
While there's the check-file extension to the SFTP protocol to calculate a remote file checksum, it's not widely supported. Particularly it's not supported by the most widespread SFTP server implementation, the OpenSSH. See What SFTP server implementations support check-file extension.
Not many clients/client libraries support it either. You didn't specify, what client/library you are using, so I cannot provide more details.
For details about some implementations, see:
Python Paramiko: How to check if Paramiko successfully uploaded a file to an SFTP server?
.NET WinSCP: Verify checksum of a remote file against a local file over SFTP/FTP protocol
What SFTP server implementations support check-file extension
Other than that, your only option is to download the file back (if uploading) and compare locally.
If you have a shell access to the server, you can of course try to run some shell checksum command (e.g. sha256sum) over a separate shell/SSH connection (or the "exec" channel) and parse the results. But that's not an SFTP solution anymore.
Examples:
Calculate hash of file with Renci SSH.NET in VB.NET
Comparing MD5 of downloaded files against files on an SFTP server in Python
I'm using WinSCP .NET assembly. When I call the Session.PutFiles method, it sends the following series of commands:
TYPE A
PASV
MLSD
TYPE A
PASV
STOR myfile
Is there a way to tell it NOT to send the MLSD? (MLSD requests the contents of the remote directory be sent back.) At the very least, I don't need this information so it's just wasting bandwidth. I don't even know how I would access it -- maybe WinSCP is doing something with it internally? What worries me more, though, is that I was given very specific specs about the series of FTP commands that I was supposed to send, which includes several non-standard commands, apparently the site at the other end has a customized FTP server. So I don't want an extra command to screw things up.
In the latest version, with default transfer settings, WinSCP does not use the MLSD command.
It's used only with OverwriteMode.Resume or OverwriteMode.Append to retrieve attributes of the remote file.
Also, WinSCP issues the MLSD command once for every destination directory (not for each file).
Every month we send reports to a server using FTP. We run a query on a database to create the files then use the ftp functionality in LabVIEW to do the transfer. This runs on a Windows system.
This works fine but now we have to switch to using SFTP and the CopSSH package has been recommended. As LabVIEW has no native SFTP functionality we are looking at how we can use the sftp.exe application from CopSSH.
From the command prompt we have set up the encryption and made the initial connection using sftp username#host and entered the password. This has been confirmed by the team on the server side so connection to the server is set up. Now we just use sftp username#host and no password is required.
Where we are struggling is how to initiate the transfer from our LabVIEW code. We are able to call system commands using the System Exec VI but is there a way to pass a list of functions to the SFTP executable?
The commands used to transfer the files when we type it at the command prompt are:
sftp username#host
put c:/Data/File1.txt remoteFile1
put c:/Data/File2.txt remoteFile2
put c:/Data/File3.txt remoteFile3
quit
This works from the command prompt but I am looking to just call the sftp executable with a list of files to transfer. I don't think this would be specific to LabVIEW as you could use a batch file to run from a scheduled job.
LabVIEW can call ActiveX and .net but we really need to use this specific application.
I have been using WinSCP which has a command line version, winscp.com. It supports sftp and allows synchronize, keepuptodate, get, put and delete on folders and files. One word of warning, keepuptodate depends on an unbroken connection. Although WinSCP can remake a connection automatically, keepuptodate cannot. I suspect it is based on Microsoft's .NET SystemIO FileSystemWatcher. I therefore do a regular synchronize to keep a mirror of my source folder tree on the remote target.
If copssh's sftp.exe is a command line utility, and System Exec in your version of LabVIEW has the 'standard input' terminal (present at least since 8.5), you should be able to simply wire the commands you want sftp.exe to run into the standard input terminal.
If that doesn't work for some reason, could you use PuTTY instead of copssh? The documentation for PuTTY's PSFTP component says that it can execute a sequence of commands in a script file using the -b command line switch, e.g.
psftp user#hostname -b myscript.scr
so you could have your LabVIEW program create the script file then run it with System Exec.
You are mixing SSH and SFTP. SSH opens a secure connection, but SFTP is a separate protocol which is run over SSH connection and requires a separate tunnel. In OpenSSH (and it's Windows Port, copSSH) it's sftp.exe application that does SFTP.
Now about FTP vs SFTP. Please check an article that explains the difference between SFTP and FTP(S). If LabView supports FTP, this doesn't help you when you need to perform SFTP transfers.
I don't know whether you can use external ActiveX controls in LabView. If you can, you are welcome to check our SFTP ActiveX control, that will let you do the transfer. If all you can do is call external application, then you'd have to use copSSH's sftp.exe.