[Swift-user] swift interface with egee/glite

[Ben Clifford]

> 1. EGEE has LFC a common file catalog and a replica handling system.
> Couldn't it be treated as a shared file system?

Shared file systems mean different things to different people.

In the context of Swift at the time that I wrote that prototype, the 
needed shared filesystem was posix-like (ie. you could use cp or 
fopen()) filesystem shared between where Swift uploads/downloads files and 
where programs actually run. In the traditional OSG cluster model which 
influenced the original site model, that is eg. an NFS filesystem running 
on a cluster head node.

Having replica management and a file catalog provides a different 
interface. I played a little bit with trying to get that to work once but 
ran into a stumbling block - how do I get the actual executable onto a 
worker node if I can only put files into the shared file catalog rather 
than onto the worker node's posix file system? That led me to the approach 
I took in the email that I sent you (although its probably not the only 
approach), I think.

The other questions aren't really specific to the prototype I worked on so 
I'll leave for other people to answer in line with the current orthodoxy.

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