MiG SFTP Setup

1 Introduction On the following pages we go through the steps to set up SFTP access to MiG, so that you can access files and directories in your MiG home in a more efficient way than the ordinary Files web interface. These instructions are mostly intended for advanced users and if you don't work with many and/or big files you probably don't need SFTP access at all. The screenshots are from an English Windows 8 with Firefox 29. Small deviations should be expected on other platforms and Firefox versions. It is also possible to use other platforms and SFTP clients as long as they support login with SSH key. It should be noted, however, that some clients like PuTTY and Filezilla are artificially limited to usernames of 100 characters which may cause problems with our looong usernames. FireFTP covered here is known to work on all platforms without this limitation, however.

2 Install an SFTP Client 1

Firefox/FireFTP

If you haven't got Firefox already you can install it by following the instructions on www.getfirefox.org Open your Firefox browser and locate Add-ons from the menu. Type fireftp in the search bar on the top right and press the Enter key.

Click the 'Install' button next to the FireFTP entry

once the download and installation finishes you need to restart Firefox to enable FireFTP. You can use the 'Restart now' link or manually close and reopen Firefox.

3 Preparing SFTP Access 1

Firefox/FireFTP

You need a personal RSA key to access your MiG home through SFTP. Therefore you need to import such a key if you want to access your grid home with FireFTP. You can use the one you received in the zip file along with your MiG user certificate. Open the zip file and unpack both the key.pem file and the key.pub file within e.g. by dragging each of them to another folder or the desktop as shown below.

The key.pem is your private key which you should keep safe just like your certificate. The key.pub is your corresponding public key, and thus does not need to be kept secret.

Open the key.pub file in a text editor by double clicking it and selecting e.g. 'notepad' when asked about the application to open it with

This slightly cryptic text is your actual public key. Select the entire text with the mouse and copy it to the clipboard for pasting in one of the next steps

Open Firefox and navigate to the 'SFTP' section of your MiG 'Settings' page https://dk-cert.migrid.org/cgi-bin/settings.py?topic=sftp You need to have your user certificate installed to access that page. Complete instructions for that part are available in our user certificate guide elsewhere, but you have probably already followed them to get this far.

Paste the recently copied public key into the text field at the bottom by right clicking in the field and selecting 'Paste'

Click on 'Save SFTP Settings' at the bottom of the page to confirm that you want to be able to use SFTP with your private/public key pair.

and you should see a save confirmation like this

Now you are ready to access your MiG home with an SFTP client.

4 Configure Your MiG Home Connection 1

Firefox/FireFTP

Open Firefox again and bring up FireFTP by navigating to e.g. sftp://

just click 'OK' if you are told to fill in the hostname as above.

Now use the 'Create an account...' drop down at the top left to set up your account

Enter the login details from the 'Graphical SFTP access' section on the 'SFTP' settings page where you pasted your public key. IMPORTANT: In the case of the screenshot here the username would be L0M9REsvU1Q9TkEvTD1OQS9PPU5CSS9PVT1OQS9DTj1Kb25hcyBCYXJkaW5vL2VtYWlsQWRkcmVzcz1i YXJkaW5vQG5iaS5rdS5kaw__

but you need to use the one from your own 'SFTP' settings page.

Instead of clicking 'OK' yet you need to click the 'Connection' tab after filling in the login details and (optionally) the MiG certificate password you chose when you signed up for MiG. IMPORTANT: FireFTP saves passwords for you by default. In case you share your computer (account) with others you should be aware of the security implications of having your key available without a password. It is possible to disable the saving so that the password must be entered each time the key is used to connect. For brevity that is not covered here.

On the Connection tab you click on the dropdown for 'Security' and select 'SFTP'

That will result in the port field changing to 22 but you need to edit it to the port given with your login details.

In this case the Port field must be changed to 2222. Then click the Browse button to select the previously mentioned key.pem file

In the Open dialog locate the previously unpacked key.pem, and double click it or select it and click 'Open'. In this example it was unpacked to the desktop.

Klik 'OK' to finish the account setup

and the setup is done.

5 Connect to Your MiG Home 1

Firefox/FireFTP

From now on you can simply open FireFTP from Firefox and click the 'Connect' button for the saved dk.migrid.org account

The first time you connect you will be asked to verify that it is the correct MiG server. It should look like this and you should ckick 'Yes' if the fingerprint is the same

After connecting you should see the hopefully familiar view of your MiG home to the right and your local files to the left. You can transfer files back and forth with drag n' drop or using the green arrow keys in the middle. Some filesacan also be opened for editing directly in your MiG home by right clicking and choosing Open.

When you are done, just click the 'Disconnect' button to end the SFTP session.

6 Additional Information Please refer to the online documentation for more detailed FireFTP usage instructions or instructions for using whatever SFTP client you prefer, to achieve the same results there.