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README.md

AutoTx logo AutoTx - AutoTransfer Service

AutoTx is a Windows service doing background file transfers from a local disk to a network share, licensed under the GPLv3, developed and provided by the Imaging Core Facility (IMCF) at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, Switzerland.

It was primarily designed and developed for getting user-data off microscope acquisition computers after acquisition with these goals:

  • The user owning the data should be able to log off from the computer after initiating the data transfer, enabling other users to log on while data is still being transferred.
  • Any other interactive session at the computer must not be disturbed by the background data transfer (in particular any data acquisition done by the next user at the system).
  • No additional software has to be operated by the user for initiating the transfer, avoiding the need for learning yet another tool.

Features

  • User-initiated: data is actively "handed over" to the service by dropping it into a specific folder, commonly referred to as the "incoming location".
  • Monitoring of system-critical parameters: the service has a number of configurable system parameters that are constantly being monitored. If one of them is outside their defined valid range, any running transfer will be immediately suspended and no new transfers will be started.
  • Auto-Resume: if a transfer is interrupted due to system limitations or the operating system being shut down the transfer gets automatically resumed as soon as possible without requiring any user interaction.
  • Email notifications: the user is notified via email of completed transfers, as well as on transfer interruptions (system being shutdown or similar).
  • Error reporting: in addition to user notifications, the service will send error notifications via email to a separate admin address.

Concept

The service is expected to operate in an ActiveDirectory (AD) environment, with a dedicated AD-account (referred to as the service account) being used to run the service on the client computer(s). Furthermore, a network share is expected (currently only a single one is supported) where the service account has appropriate permissions to copy data to.

For any user that should be allowed to use the transfer service, a dedicated folder has to exist on this network share, the name of the folder being the (short) AD account name (i.e. the login name or sAMAccountName) of the user.

  • AD-function-account
  • remote share with username folders

Under the hood

For the actual transfer task, the service is using a C# wrapper for the Microsoft RoboCopy tool called RoboSharp.

Requirements

  • ActiveDirectory integration: service account, local r/w, remote w
  • .NET Framework: version 4.5 required
  • Windows 7, 64 bit: currently only this has been tested, 32 bit support is planned as well as support for newer Windows versions (Server 2012 is confimed as not-working at the moment).

Installation

Currently the service doesn't have a conventional installer but rather has to be registered using the InstallUtil.exe tool coming with the .NET framework. A PowerShell script to help with the installation is provided with each AutoTx package. To use the script, follow these steps:

  • Log on to the computer using an account with adminstrative privileges.
  • Edit the ScriptsConfig.ps1 settings file, adjust the values according to your setup.
  • Open a PowerShell console using the Run as Administrator option. This is absolutely crucial, as otherwise InstallUtil will fail to do its job. Simply being logged on to the computer as an admin is NOT SUFFICIENT! The script Run-ElevatedPowerShell.ps1 can be used to start a shell with elevated permissions.
  • Navigate to the installation package directory, run the Install-Service.ps1 script.

Manual Installation

For detailed steps on how to do the installation steps yourself, have a look at the manual installation instructions.

Operation

Logging

The Windows Event Log seems to be a good place for logging if you have a proper monitoring solution in place, which centrally collects and checks it. Since we don't have one, and none of the other ActiveDirectory setups known to us have on either, the service places its log messages in a plain text file in good old Unix habits.

Everything that needs attention is written into the service's base directory in a file called service.log. There is another PS1 script in the Resources directory that is showing the content of the log file on the console in real- time (like tail -f on Unix).

Status

Same as for the log messages, the service stores its status in a file, just this is in XML format so it is easily usable from C# code using the core Serialization / Deserialization functions. Likewise, this file is to be found in the service base directory and called status.xml.

Grace Location Cleanup

After a transfer has completed, the service moves all folders of that transfer into one subfolder inside the $ManagedDirectory/DONE/<username>/ location. The subfolders are named with a timestamp YYYY-MM-DD__hh-mm-ss. The grace location checks are done

  • at service startup
  • after a transfer has finished
  • once every configurable hours

Development

Code Structure

The code has evolved from a very basic project, and is currently mostly a monolithic structure where the major part of the functionality is contained in one central class. This is certainly not the most elegant design, but it is getting the job done. Refactoring suggestions and / or pull requests are welcome!

Prerequisites

  • VisualStudio 2013 - the Community Edition is sufficient. Newer versions of VisualStudio should work but have not been tested.
  • ReSharper - JetBrains ReSharper Ultimate 2017.1 has been used for development. Respecting the Coding Style will be very difficult without it, not speaking of the other features you might miss. So basically this is a must...
  • To build the C# bindings for RoboCopy, please don't use the code from the original repository on github at the moment (it contains all kinds of build- artifacts and has a few other glitches) but rather the fork provided here: RoboSharp fork.

Building + Installing

  • TODO: explain how to build
  • After building the service, use the Make-Package.ps1 script to create an installation package. It will contain the previously mentioned Install-Service.ps1 script, the latest configuration file version and of course the required service binaries, DLLs, etc.