File Transfer

Files can be transferred to and from ALICE using SCP (secure copy) and SMB (the native Windows file sharing protocol).

SCP is available to all clients no matter where they are, SMB is only possible for clients within the UOL network, including those using the University VPN service.

University Windows PCs

University Windows PCs (those situated on the campus network) and University laptops connected to the VPN service can use SMB to transfer files to and from home directories and projects' scratch and data areas.

You can access your ALICE home directory through Windows Explorer with the following address:

• \\uol.le.ac.uk\root\ALICE\home

Similarly you can access your project's data or scratch area with the following addresses, where project is the name of your ALICE project:

• \\uol.le.ac.uk\root\ALICE\data\project

...and...

• \\uol.le.ac.uk\root\ALICE\scratch\project

Beware to only use these links to transfer files to and from your local computer, and don't be tempted to copy files from one part of ALICE to another this way. It will always be a lot faster to copy files within an ALICE session if for example you are copying or moving files from scratch to data.

Non-University Windows PCs

Windows PCs which are not managed by Digital Services, whether on the UOL network, on Eduroam or at another location, can transfer files to and from ALICE using the SCP (secure copy) protocol. This is built on SSH and provides a secure encrypted means of transferring data.

We recommend the WinSCP SCP client for this purpose, it will need to be installed on the PC.

It will be necessary to create a connection profile with the following information:

• Hostname: alice.le.ac.uk
• User name: University IT account user name
• Password: University IT account password

The login process is...

1. Click the Login button
2. On the first attempt to log in with WinSCP you will be asked to verify the ALICE host key. The key fingerprint offered for confirmation may be any one of:
   • SHA-256: 008vN8az9CZ0SIwBOka+lO0fNzhHPlYBHGiWUuQewkc
   • MD5: 3c:07:cf:f1:d9:1a:bf:03:35:96:e5:89:ce:c3:4d:79
3. If any of those fingerprints are presented click Yes.
4. Any other fingerprint offered indicates a security issue. Click Cancel and contact IT Help.

If you are off-campus WinSCP will request your MFA credentials after you have entered your password.

Once you have logged in successfully you will see the main WinSCP window.

By default the left-hand side shows files in your C: drive root folder and the right-hand side shows files in the home directory on ALICE. You can drag files from one side to the other to copy them.

You may need to change the configuration options in WinSCP to modify its behaviour if the default options aren't suitable. You can find more information in the WinSCP Documentation.

Linux Computers

SCP can be used to transfer files to and from ALICE. The basic scp command will suffice for most uses, for example to copy the file data from the local computer to the directory things in the user's ALICE home directory, use the following form where user is your own user name:

scp data user@alice.le.ac.uk:things/

You will be prompted for your password and MFA credentials.

To copy a directory, including all it's contents, use the '-r' option with scp. For example, to copy the directory data_files to the directory copied_data in the user's ALICE home directory:

scp -r data_files user@alice.le.ac.uk:copied_data/

Again, you will be prompted for your password and MFA credentials.

Mac OS X Computers

Exactly as with Linux, SCP can be used to transfer files to and from ALICE. The basic scp command will suffice for most uses, for example to copy the file data from the local computer to the folder things in the user's ALICE home directory, use the following form where user is your own user name:

scp data user@alice.le.ac.uk:things/

There are other file transfer clients available such as Cyberduck.