August 7, 2007

New Version of SSH Facilitates File Transfers from a Remote Host

CIT has installed a new version of SSH (secure shell) on Titan. With the new version, it is now much more convenient to carry out secure file transfers of Titan data sets from a remote host. This benefits those users who don’t generally access the Titan system but need to use Titan data sets.

Titan already allows direct transfer of data sets and automatic translation between ASCII and EBCDIC via the SSH protocol. The SSH protocol is widely used on Unix systems to carry out secure (encrypted) file transfers. SSH software is also available for Windows and Macintosh machines. For example, the NIH Business System (NBS) is one of the many applications taking advantage of Titan’s SSH facility.

Every user, whether using a remote host or not, must have a USS-enabled Titan userid for all SSH transfers. Please note that the system cannot authorize the use of USS for any userid containing a $.

SSH transfers initiated on Titan

As with the previous version, SSH transfers initiated on Titan are carried out in batch jobs. The Titan Batch Processing manual provides further information on Titan-initiated file transfers (under the section “Transfer Utilities”). This manual is available from the CIT publication service (under “Batch Processing and JCL”).

Want to know more?

To learn more about SSH file transfers from a remote host contact the NIH Help Desk at 301-496-4357, 866-319-4357 (toll free), or 301-496-8294 (TTY), or via email at ithelpdesk@nih.gov and ask to speak with an SSH consultant. A technical reference for SSH transfers from a remote host can be found at http://datacenter.cit.nih.gov/titan-net/SSH.htm but we suggest that you contact an SSH consultant before using this site.