Topaz : A GridFTP extension to Firefox M. Taufer, R. Zamudio, D. Catarino, K. Bhatia, B. Stearn University of Texas at El Paso San Diego Supercomputer Center Abstract As grid infrastructures mature, an increasing challenge is to provide end-user scientists with intuitive interfaces to access computational services, data management capabilities, and visualization tools. Topaz provides scientists with a user friendly interface for data management by extending Firefox to allows access to GridFTP servers directly from desktop machines. With the Topaz extension, the Firefox browser directly supports the GridFTP protocol allowing the user to specify a gsiftp url (“gsiftp://server/file”) and provides file upload and download capabilities. Topaz works with the GAMA security infrastructure to support GSI-based user authentication. Topaz Features GSI security View directory contents Upload and download files Drag and drop installation Built-in authentication Download Coming Soon Third party transfers Authentication via my proxy GridFTP GridFTP is a high-performance, secure, reliable data transfer protocol optimized for high-bandwidth wide-area networks. It features: GSI security: De-facto standard security system used in Grid applications. Third-party transfers: Mediation transfer between two servers. Partial file access: Upload or download only a specified region of a file. Reliability/restart: Periodically save progress and restart from last position if transfer fails. Large file support: All file sizes, lengths, and offsets are 64 bits. Parallel transfers: Multiple TCP streams are used between two hosts. Firefox Firefox is the second most popular browser, with over 12% of the market, and runs on all modern platforms. Firefox extensions can be built by wrapping new functionalities, e.g., client protocol implementations, into the Mozilla component framework. Upload: Topaz allows users to upload files to the GridFTP servers by using an intuitive file picking interface system: the user selects the file to upload through the Firefox file dialog. File object and current gsiftp URL from the location bar are passed to Topaz. Topaz establishes a control connection, authenticates the user, and opens a data connection for upload. Topaz also opens the file and sends the data over the data connection to the GridFTP server. By using GAMA web services, Topaz obtains the required user and host certificates necessary for accessing GridFTP servers. Topaz provides the capability for managing a list of currently and previously used GAMA servers. Listing and download: Topaz determines whether the gsiftp URL given by the user represents a file or directory and issues the corresponding request to establish a data connection to download the content. Globus fetches raw data from the GridFTP server and forwards it to Topaz that formats the data appropriately for the request (directory listing or file content) and forwards the formatted data to Firefox. After the GAMA server specified by the user is contacted, a login window prompts the user for their information in order to authenticate and obtain the certificates that are necessary for accessing the GridFTP servers. Topaz takes advantage of Firefox’s expandability to provided users with a familiar interface for data management on the grid. The Topaz software components connect the easy to use browser to the powerful GridFTP protocol provided by the Globus toolkit libraries. No Globus library needs to be installed a priori. Security Integration Listing, Downloading, and Uploading Contributors & Sponsors References 1.K. Bhatia, M. Taufer, B. Stearn, R. Zamudio, D. Catarino: Integrate GridFTP into Firefox - Build grid protocols into Mozilla-based tools. IBM developWork, 10 Oct K. Bhatia, B. Stearn, M. Taufer, R. Zamudio, and D. Catarino: Extending Grid Protocols onto the Desktop using the Mozilla Framework. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Grid Computing Environments (GCE 2006), in conjunction with SC 2006, November 2006, Tampa, Florida 3. K. Bhatia, K. Mueller, S. Chandra: GAMA: Grid Account Management Architecture. IEEE International Conference on EScience and Grid Computing, Dec 2005 Topaz Framework