Sharing data with other users inside and outside the institute

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Overview

Storage management in the institute is restrictive. By default access is denied and then certain users or groups of users get whitelisted. To share data with other users, find a suitable location here.

Please be aware that there are several storage locations with intentionally limited degrees of freedom regarding permissions. Examples:

• StorageUnified storage blocks like /data/u_someuser_software or /data/hu_someuser (all storage blocks with "u" flag, more info at StorageUnified ) cannot be shared at all.
• Storage blocks with g flag are hard-tied to membership in a certain user groups. However, group members can be added/removed.

Please be aware that IT has to be very strict about granting permissions in the name of users. Find out more at OtherPeoplesData .

Where should I put data to share it?

This table should help you decide.

Method	Data type	Example location	Target audience	Ext	Security level	Write access	Data Volume
Research-Storage	Research study related data (MRI images, EEG recordings)	/data/pt_12345	A group of well defined institute users	-	High	(Defined when requesting storage there)	No artificial limit
Institute-Sharing	Non-sensitive data	/data/dt_transfer	Anyone	-	Low	Anyone	up to 1 TB
AFS-Study	Research study related data (MRI images, EEG recordings)	/afs/cbs.mpg.de/projects/bdb	A group of well defined institute users	-	Medium	Selected users or groups from the MPI CBS	Up to 32 GB per test subject. Unlimited number of test subjects.
AFS-Groupshare	Miscellanous data	/data/p_gr_somegroup_share /afs/cbs.mpg.de/share/gr_somegroup	Members of a specific research group	-	High	All members of the respective research group in the MPI CBS, nobody else.	10 GB by default, can be extended
GWDG-Owncloud	Miscellanous data	-	Any person with an email address		High	Arbitrary people in the internet, your explicitly granted access to.	up to 50GB
Cryptshare	Miscellanous data	-	Any person with an email address		High	Nobody. Once uploaded, the data is unchangeable.	up to 20 GB
FTP	Non-sensitive data	/afs/cbs.mpg.de/tmp/internet	Anyone		None	Anyone	1 TB
Groupware-Sharing	Emails, calendars	-	Any person with an email address		High	Whoever the Manage or Admin permission of a folder is assigned to.	Megabytes. The folder's size is counted to your mail quota.
SFTP	Sensitive data	/data/dept_transfer-...	A specific outside user		Medium	Any internal user having gotten permissions + a specific outside user	100G

Sharing methods

Sharing e-mails and calendars

Mail folders (incl. subfolders), calendars, contact lists and other folders in your account of the institute's groupware server can be shared with other institute users.

To share a folder, right click on it in the groupware server's WebGUI and choose "Share".

Note:

• All folders continue to be your property. If you i.g. need a group calendar in research group, it's a bad idea, to have the calendar in the account of a user with a temporary contract.
• Group calendars should always be located in the group head's account.
• Only folders can be shared, not single objects within them.

(bidirectional) sharing folders with other people (like Dropbox)

The MPG provides a service called OwnCloud. It's free to use for MPG employees. 50 GB of storage is included. You can share single folders of this storage with arbitrary people that

• ... do not need to be MPG employees
• ... but must have an email address.

Storing sensitive data (related to test subjects) in "unsafe countries violates German law, which applies to e.g. Dropbox. This is why you should use this MPG internal service.

Cooperating on research project files via storage blocks in /data

Research storage can be requested at http://topic.cbs.mpg.de/getstorage. These StorageUnified storage blocks always start with p (i.e. /data/pt_zfs000 ) which means "Permission management".

Use this command to show permissions assigned to a storage block:

user@host > cbsdata -s [ID]

e.g.

user@host > cbsdata -s pt_12345

Hints:

• Data managed by the StorageUnified service is accessible in the core network of the institute only. It's not accessible directly from the internet, from private Laptops or from the Bennewitz branch.
• You can work on it remotely, though.
• A Gateway-Service provides access to this storage for computers not running IT-managed Linux.

Cooperatively working on old research project files in /a/projects

Storage blocks in AFS below /afs/cbs.mpg.de/projects can be easily and flexibly shared. Three permissions groups are assigned to any storage block:

• proj.STUDYID.readers : Users allowed to read stuff
• proj.STUDYID.writers : Users allowed to read and write stuff
• proj.STUDYID.admins : Users allowed to change permissions (which means: "... change memberships of the three groups)

If you're a member of the .admin group, you can change memberships using the cbsprojects command line tool.

Hints:

• Group members can be regular users or other groups (i.e. gr_cogneuro or gr_margulies )
• A Gateway-Service provides access to this storage for computers not running IT-managed Linux.

Cooperatively working on files within a research group

If you're member of a research group, you might be interested in sharing data with your whole group for purposes that are not strictly associated to research projects. Older storage of this kind is located in AFS (e.g. /afs/cbs.mpg.de/share/gr_imprs ).

More recent storage like that looks like /data/p_gr_somegroup_share

Upon request via ticket, every group receives an exclusive folder for that purpose.

(bidirectional) sharing data publicly via FTP

If your data doesn't need protection (e.g. because it's intended to be published anyway), use the PublicSharing service.

How it works: There's a FTP server with a fixed username/password which someone from the outside can access. You can read/write data there, outside non-institute users can as well. All data there must be considered public. Don't put sensitive data there.

(bidirectional) sharing data non-publicly with external users via SFTP

To share data with a specific non-institute user, use the PrivateSharing service.

How it works: You request storage for a certain time. You'll receive some information (paths, URLs, a special user name an a password). You send the new user name an password to the external non-institute user. Bidirectional sharing data via SFTP is now possible.

sharing data with institute users within the core network

There are several folder for sharing with the whole institute.

Folder	Description
/afs/cbs.mpg.de/tmp/leipzig Z:\tmp\leipzig	If in doubt, use this one.
/afs/cbs.mpg.de/tmp/bennewitz	Use this, if the data should end up in the Bennewitz branch of the institute. This folder is physically located there.
/data/dt_transfer	Another institute wide sharing folder—replacement for former /scr/transfer