The best thing to note about the programs hp2dp and dp2hp, is that they are simple scripts that then call the biniary programs hpss2dpss and dpss2hpss.

The scripts are mainly to set some common variables for you. One of the variables is PFTP_CONFIG_FILENAME, which should point to a file that contains the IP ADDRESSES of the dpss server nodes that you want to use, one per line.

% cat pftp.hosts
131.243.243.1
131.243.243.2
%

in the preceding example you can see that the file 'pftp.hosts' contains two hosts, and lists them by ip address (you can't use names!). The other thing to note is that the script sets the name of the HPSS that you wish to use to transfer the data to/from, and what port to connect to on that machine.

Other things that you may wish to do is set the binary 'hpss2dpss' & 'dpss2hpss' to be set uid (chmod 4555 hpss2dpss) of user iss (if you set up that user). The reason to do this, is that you can now setup a ".netrc" file that will automagicly log you into the hpss. The reason that you have to do this is that the HPSS has an FTP interface, and requires a user name and login. The reason to set up a ficticious user, it that you can have one psudeo user and let all the data go to that account.... you can also run it as yourself and use your own "dot netrc" file.

A netrc file might look something like the following:

% cat ~/.netrc
machine archive.nersc.gov login foobar password b@z macdef init
site setcos 3
setpwidth 2
setpblocksize 2097152  

This would be used if you have an account with a user named "foobar" with passwd b@z. This also sets the Class of Service to 3, and parallel width to use as 2, which matches the fact that I've specified two dpss server nodes in pftp.hosts file earlier. Ask your HPSS administrator for what class of service you should be using.

You should change the read permissions of the .netrc file to be read only user, this can be accomplished by a "chmod 400 ~/.netrc".

If you have done all of the following you should be ready to start transfering data!