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Warning!

Puhti and Mahti computing services have been decommissioned and no new jobs are accepted or executed on its compute nodes. Puhti and Mahti login nodes and storage services are planned to remain available until 15 October 2026. Clean up unnecessary files and move any data you need to keep by 31 August 2026. See the Roihu data migration guide for instructions on transferring your data to Roihu.

Allas connection configuration

The easiest general option to set up Allas connection configuration is to use allas-conf tool:

  • Sets up connection configuration for many different tools
  • Swift or S3 connection
  • Is itself a command-line tool.
  • Available on CSC supercomputers
  • Can be installed to Linux and Mac, but not Windows.
  • Suits well, if only one CSC project at a time in use for Allas.

Alternatively, one can use Roihu web interface:

  • Sets up connection configuration for web interface file section and rclone, but not other Allas clients.
  • Swift or S3 connection
  • Available in web-interface, so no installations needed for using it, but the CSC project must have Roihu service enabled.

allas-conf availability

Available on CSC supercomputers with allas module. Can be (installed)[allas-conf-installation] to Linux and Mac, but not Windows.

module load allas
When you load the Allas module in Roihu, it lists you the status of currently configured Allas and Lumi-O connections. You can check this information later on with command:

check-allas-connections

Using allas-conf to configure connections to Allas, SD-Connect and Lumi-O

S3 connection to Allas

To enable S3 based connection to Allas in Roihu, use command allas-conf. 

allas-conf

In Puhti and Mahti you must add option -m S3 

allas-conf -m S3

The authentication process asks you to give the password of your CSC account. Note that the Haka password or password related to you ssh key are not valid in this authentication step.

Once S3 connection is configured, same authentication is used for all login sessions and it does not have an expiration time.

allas-conf generates configuration files in S3 mode for: * rclone: .config/rclone/rclone.conf * s3cmd: ~/.s3cfg * aws: credentials and S3 region in ~/.aws/credentials and S3 endpoint in ~/.aws/config files.

Additionally, Python 'boto3' and R 'aws.s3' libraries use 'aws' configuration files.

If you use these keys in other services, your should make sure that the keys always remain private. Any person who has access to these two keys, can access and modify all the data that the project has in Allas.

If needed, you can deactivate an S3 key pair with command:

allas-conf --s3remove

Note

Remember to be careful and security-aware when configuring S3 connection to Allas. The S3 keys are stored in a readable format in your home directory and anyone who can read your keys can access Allas until the keys are expilicitly revoked from Allas. Removing the keys from your own computer is not enough to deactivate them.

SWIFT connection to Allas

Swift connection is valid for up to eight hours

Configure Allas access using Swift protocol: 

allas-conf --swift
The allas-conf command prompts for your CSC password (University/Haka password will not work here). It lists your Allas projects and asks you to define a project (if not already defined as an argument).

By default, allas-conf lists your projects that have access to Allas, but if you know the name of the project, you can also give it as an argument: 

allas-conf project_201234

allas-conf --swift enables you to use only one Allas project at a time in one session. You can switch to another project by running allas-conf again.

Note that the Allas project does not need to be the same as the project you are using in Roihu.

allas-conf --swift generates Swift configuration files for : a-tools,rcloneandswift`.

The authentication information is stored in the OS_AUTH_TOKEN and OS_STORAGE_URL environment variables. However, you can refresh the authentication at any time by running allas-conf again. The environment variables are set only for the current login session, so you need to configure authentication individually for each shell with which you wish to access Allas.

If you are running big, multistep processes (e.g. batch jobs), it may be that your data management pipeline takes more than eight hours. In those cases you can add option -k to the allas-conf command. 

allas-conf -k
With this option on, the password is stored into environment variable OS_PASSWORD. A-commands recognize this environment variable and when executed, automatically refresh the current Allas connection.

S3 connection to Lumi-O

You can configure Lumi-O connection with command:

allas-conf --lumi
The configuration process asks you to retrieve your Lumi project number and keys from Lumi-O Credentioals Management Service Page. Note that configuring Lumi-O connection this way overwrites the configuration files that aws s3 and s3cmd commands use. In the case of rclone previosly defined Allas connections remain still active.

Connection to SD Connect service

You can configure SD Connect connection with command:

allas-conf --sdc

The authentication process asks you to give the password of your CSC account. Note that the Haka password or password related to you ssh key are not valid in this authentication step. Once you have selected the SD Connect project you wish to use, the configuration process asks you to copy an API-token from SD Connect web interface. Not that in SD Connerct, you must create the API-token using the same project that you seleted in the beginning of this configuration process.

allas-conf installation

allas-conf can be installed only to Linux or Mac.

  1. Download the allas_conf script to set up the connection to your Allas project: wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CSCfi/allas-cli-utils/master/allas_conf
  2. Install Rclone for Swift connection OR OpenStack client for S3 connection

If running allas_conf locally, you should modify all of the commands above with:

  • Add source the beginning
  • Use --user option to define your CSC username .

For example:

source allas_conf --user your-csc-username -p your-csc-project-name
source allas_conf --user your-csc-username -p your-csc-project-name -m S3
source allas_conf --user your-csc-username -p csc-project-name --s3remove
source allas_conf --user your-csc-username --lumi
source allas_conf --user your-csc-username --sdc

S3 connection details

To use Allas with S3 on a machine where allas-conf is not available or with tools not directly supported, usually the following information is needed:

  • S3 credentials: access key and secret key
  • S3 endpoint: a3s.fi or https://a3s.fi
  • S3 region: sometimes no settings needed, sometimes leave empty (````)

The easiest way to get the S3 credentials is by configuring an S3 connection on a CSC supercomputer (or some other machine that can run allas_conf tool) and see the keys from the printout of the command. 

module load allas
allas-conf -m S3

Later the keys can be found for example with: less ~/.aws/credentials

If you wish to access Allas from a personal laptop or some other server with s3cmd or aws command-line tools, you can also copy the setting files as such. Use any file transfer tool, for example scp.

  • aws: copy the ~/.aws-folder to your home directory to C:\Users\username\.aws on Windows or ~/.aws/ on Mac and Linux.
  • s3cmd: copy the ~/.s3cfg-file to your home directory on Mac and Linux.