UB Box Mounting No Longer Supported

Due to recent changes with Box and because of the way CCR's file systems are mounted, we are unable to support the secure mounting of UB Box on the data transfer server going forward.


UBIT provides information about Box FTP transfer options on their website

The website notes:  Box supports Passive FTP, but not Active.

This means you will not be able to go directly from CCR's transfer server to the Box FTP server using a GUI-style FTP client (i.e. FileZilla).  These FTP clients will download files into a (usually temporary) directory on your local machine before moving them to the destination server so make sure you have enough space locally to handle this temporary storage.


We provide this article with an alternative option for using secure FTP from the transfer server to UB Box, though it is not as convenient as mounting UB Box was, nor does it provide a drag/drop interface like the GUI FTP clients do.


We realize this will be disappointing to many CCR users.  We've always said that we will do our best to support the mounting of that filesystem, knowing we have no control over the Box product.  Over the years, we managed to alter our scripts and find ways around the changes Box makes, but it has now become impossible to do so securely.  CCR has made a case to UBIT to adopt a university-wide subscription to the Globus file transfer service, including the Box plug-in they offer.  You can help this effort by contacting your department's IT support and asking them to encourage UBIT decision makers to buy into Globus.  With the Box plug-in, transferring files from CCR to Box would be fast, reliable, and secure.  Although CCR offers a Globus endpoint for our storage, we do not have access to UB's Box configuration and can not setup the Box plug-in ourselves.  If you need additional information to help advocate for this service with your IT staff and UBIT, please submit a help ticket and we'll be happy to provide it.


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