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Market Storage User Guide

Overview​

In order to access Market storage, shares must be mapped on each individual machine. Once mapped, Market shares can be accessed similarly to local storage and will support standard actions like dragging and dropping files or directories. There are two types of Market shares:

  • Windows (SMB) shares, and
  • NFS shares

Windows (SMB) shares​

SMB is widely used and shares can be mapped on most operating systems. Access is controlled by one or more secure access groups, each of which contains a list of authorised users. Access groups can be updated by group owners via Monash’s GroupAdmin Tool. Because users must enter their Monash account credentials when mapping a share, it is recommended that users only mount SMB shares on their own machines rather than on shared devices such as instrument PCs. If a share does need to be mounted on a shared machine, then the RDS team can provide support and determine the most appropriate options.

NFS shares​

NFS is natively supported on Mac and Linux machines, but can also be used on some versions of Windows. NFS is often used on dedicated servers such as virtual machines (VMs) and shares are only accessible to devices with specific hostnames or IP addresses. Because NFS shares do not require user-based authentication, they are often used to make remote storage available to machines hosting services or web applications.

Accessing Market Shares​

The process for accessing Market storage varies depending upon the storage type and the operating system being used. Note that NFS shares can be mounted on some versions of Windows such as Windows 10 and 11, but additional adjustments may be required. If NFS is required for a Windows device please contact the RDS team.

SMB:

NFS:

Mapping SMB shares on Windows​

  • Open the Windows Explorer.
  • Right-click on "Computer" on the left-hand side.

  • Select "Add a network location" and then click on "Next".

  • Select "Choose a custom network location" and then click on "Next".

  • Enter the provided URL (e.g. \\storage.erc.monash.edu.au\shares\<SomeShare>) and then click on "Next".

  • Enter your Monash ID and password (if prompted). Note that if you are not using a Monash SOE (Monash-supplied and configured) machine, you will need to add "MONASH\" to your Monash username (e.g. MONASH\user123).

  • Enter a name of your choice, e.g. "RDS SomeShare" and click on "Next".

  • Review the information presented and then "Finish".

  • The newly-mapped share will then appear as a folder in the Windows Explorer.

Accessing SMB shares on Mac​

  • Access the "Go" menu which is available at the top of the screen from the desktop.
  • Click on "Connect to Server".

  • Enter the provided URL (e.g. smb://storage.erc.monash.edu.au/shares/<SomeShare>) into the textbox.
  • Click on "Connect".

  • Enter your Monash ID and password details (if required) and click on "Connect". Note that if you are not using a Monash SOE (Monash-supplied and configured) machine, you may need to add "MONASH\" to your Monash username (e.g. MONASH\user123).

  • The newly-mapped share will then appear as a folder in the macOS Finder.

Accessing SMB shares on Linux​

Accessing SMB shares on Linux As root​

From the command line, SMB shares can be mapped with the mount(8) command with the following syntax (all on one line, split here for readability):

mount -t cifs //storage.erc.monash.edu/shares/<SomeShare> /<LocalDirectory> \
  -o user=<Username>,domain=MONASH,vers=3`
note

Note that the each share needs to be mapped to a local directory (/<LocalDirectory> above) which should be created before the above command is used.

  • Enter your Monash password and press Enter.

  • Unless an error message is displayed, the share has been mapped properly and will be available via the nominated directory (/<LocalDirectory>).
  • Depending on the client system, you may wish to mount the storage as a specific local user or group using the uid and gid options, or to use a file of credentials to avoid having to specify username, domain and password on the command line. e.g. to mount the share //storage.erc.monash.edu.au/shares/vicnode into the local filesystem at /mnt/rds with local user and group IDs of 1000 and 1020:
mount -t cifs //storage.erc.monash.edu.au/shares/vicnode /mnt/vicnode \
' -o credentials=/root/.secrets,uid=1000,gid=1020,vers=3

The username and password for the account in the Monash AD are held in the file /root/.secrets (with no spaces after "=") as:

domain=MONASH
username=user123
password=secretpwd
  • If you encounter any problems, please contact the RDS team.
  • Shares can be unmounted with the umount(8) command: e.g. umount /<LocalDirectory>

Accessing SMB shares on Linux as user​

The RDS SMB shares can be accessed by user-mode accounts through the Gnome desktop or via command line utilities gio(1) or smbclient(1). This may be used from systems such as MASSIVE where user accounts do not have root privileges to mount filesystems.

Users can mount their storage with the following and have it visible in the Gnome desktop, or use the gio list and gio copy commands to manipulate files from the command line:

gio mount smb://storage.erc.monash.edu.au/shares/<sharename>`

or on older linux distributions without gio(1):

gvfs-mount smb://storage.erc.monash.edu.au/shares/<sharename>

e.g.

fred@ubuntu:~$ gio mount smb://storage.erc.monash.edu.au/shares/vicnode
Password required for share shares on storage.erc.monash.edu.au
User [user123]:
Domain [MONASH]:
Password:

Command line SMB access with rclone​

The rclone(1) utility is available for Windows, Macintosh and Linux platforms from https://rclone.org/.

While rclone(1) can be used on client systems for copying files to and from the market (SMB) storage without requiring the storage to be mounted, development of this utility has not kept pace with current security changes in the Windows Active Directory used by Monash for authentication and we can no longer recommend its use in this way. It can still be used to copy files to and from a mounted file share

Configuration and use is from the command line. A typical configuration will be generated via the command rclone config create market local

[market]
type = local

This requires that your share be mounted at the local path, eg /Volumes/R-Eng-xyz on macOS, or something such as /mnt/R-Eng-xyz on a linux system the path could be

The mounted fileshares can then be accessed with commands such as rclone ls market:/Volumes/Share-Name, e.g. "rclone ls market:/Volumes/R-Eng-xyz" or "rclone copy market:/Volumes/R-Eng-xyz/video1.mpg ."

Mapping NFS shares on Windows​

  • If NFS access on Windows is required, please contact the RDS team.

Accessing NFS shares on Mac​

  • Access the "Go" menu which is available at the top of the screen from the desktop.
  • Click on "Connect to Server".

  • Enter the provided URL (e.g. nfs://storage.erc.monash.edu:/rds1/<SomeShare>) into the textbox.
  • Click on "Connect".

  • The newly-mapped share will then appear as a folder in the macOS Finder.

Accessing NFS shares on Linux​

Accessing NFS shares on Linux Using X​

  • The mapping process via X is essentially the same as for macOS

Accessing NFS shares on Linux Using the command line​

  • NFS shares can be mapped using the mount(8) command which uses the following syntax:
mount -t nfs //storage.erc.monash.edu:/rds1/<SomeShare> /<LocalDirectory>
  • Note that the each share needs to be mapped to a local directory (/<LocalDirectory> above) which should be created before the above command is used.

  • Unless an error message is displayed, the share has been mapped properly and will be available via the nominated directory (/<LocalDirectory>).
  • Shares can be unmounted with the umount(8) command: e.g. umount /<LocalDirectory
Last updated on by Adrian Tritschler