Should I use bestman2 or dcache CLIs (srmping, srmls, etc..)

Question

I am fairly new to using SRM, and I am wondering if I should be using srm CLI tools (srmping, srmls, srmcp, etc..) provided by dcache, or bestman2 counter parts (srm-ping, srm-ls).

I used to think that either tools should work fine against either dcache, and bestman2 servers, but recently I am seeing this is not the case..

For example, following works fine..

> srm-ping srm://cms-se.sdfarm.kr:8443/srm/v2/server
SRM-PING: Thu Jul 17 21:32:09 UTC 2014  Calling SrmPing Request...
versionInfo=v2.3.0

But not following..

> srmping srm://cms-se.sdfarm.kr:8443/srm/v2/server
ERROR org.dcache.srm.client.SRMClientV2 - srmPing : try # 0 failed with error The AXIS engine could not find a target service to invoke!  targetService is managerv2

If I don't know which endpoints are dcache v.s bestman2, and I want my script to be generic enough, should I be using bestman2 clients instead of dcache counterparts? Or is this more complicated than that?

Thanks!

Answer 1

SRM is a standard protocol, so it is suppose to work for all storage implementations. The only things that differ are the protocol implementations. In addition to bestman2 and dcache srm tools, there is also another popular implementation, lcg-util (lcg-cp, lcg-ls...).

I don't know why srmping and srm-ping do not work the same. To be honest, I have always used lcg-utils. I suspect that you should just find an SRM tool that works most of the time, and use it. Or ask around to see what other people are using. I know RSV uses bestman2 tools, so probably safe to use those. As with all things, if someone isn't using it, it's probably broken. And RSV is using the bestman2 tools.