File Transfer Profiles

A file transfer profile is a mechanism for pre-configuring different types of file transfers. Both the mainframe clients (scpg3, sftpg3) and the server (sshd2) use the same profile mechanism. There are two types of profiles: named profiles and filename-matched profiles.

Named profiles can be used with the file transfer advice string parameter P. A named profile provides the default values for different advice string parameters. Those default values can be overwritten with advice string parameters.

The filename-matched profiles can be used for configuring advice string default values when transferring files whose names match a certain regular expression. Again, those default values can be overwritten with advice string parameters.

File transfer profiles for Tectia server and client tools on z/OS can be set in the /opt/tectia/etc/ssh_ftadv_config file globally for all users and in the $HOME/.ssh2/ssh_ftadv_config file for each user separately.

The syntax of the profile is:

%NAME|REGEXP ADVSTRING

Each profile starts with a profile name or an egrep style of regular expression followed by one or more white spaces and the advice string. The profile name must start with the percent (%) character. The regular expression must not start with the % character. If the % character needs to be the first character in the regular expression, it must be escaped with a backslash (\). Note that in order to get the regular expression escape character, backslash, into a regular expression, it must be escaped by using \\.

The profile name and regular expression must start from the beginning of the line. There must not be any white space in front of the name or regular expression.

An advice string is a comma-separated list of name-value pairs of type name=value. There may be white spaces in the advice string. It can span over multiple lines. There must be at least one white space character in the beginning of a spanned advice string line. An advice string must not contain the file transfer advisor marker /ftadv:/ or a file name.

Profiles with %NAME can be used with the advice string P=NAME. Profiles with REGEXP are used only for matching file names. The first REGEXP that matches a file name is used.

Comments can be added to the file with a hash (#) character. Everything on the line after # is ignored.

See the following sections for examples of Named File Transfer Profiles and Filename-Matched File Transfer Profiles in various situations.

Examples of Named File Transfer Profiles

Example 1

The following profile converts text files from Unix to MVS. ASCII is converted to EBCDIC. This profile is only used if the advice string contains the parameter P=UNIX.

%UNIX
    X=text,
    F=line,
    C=iso8859-1,
    D=ibm-1047

Example 2

The next profile converts text files from Windows to MVS. ASCII is converted to EBCDIC. The line delimiter is converted from the Windows style to the MVS style. This profile is only used if the advice string contains the parameter P=WIN.

%WIN		
    X=text,
    F=line,
    C=iso8859-1,
    D=ibm-1047,
    I=dos,
    J=mvs

Example 3

The following profile can be used when transferring text files from MVS to another MVS. This profile is only used if the advice string contains the parameter P=ZOS.

%ZOS		
    X=text,
    F=line

Example 4

This profile can be used when transferring text files between the Unix and MVS environments. All data sets created on the MVS side have fixed blocked lines of 80 characters per line. Again, to use this profile, P=FB80 needs to be added to the advice string.

%FB80	       	
    X=text,
    F=line,
    C=iso8859-1,
    D=ibm-1047,
    O=fb,
    R=80

Example 5

The following profile creates record format data sets with maximum record length of 1024 bytes. The advice string P=REC is needed.

%REC		
    F=record,
    R=1024

Example 6

The following profile can be used when transferring binary files.

%BIN            
    X=bin,
    F=stream

Examples of Filename-Matched File Transfer Profiles

Example 1

This next profile is used whenever a data set name contains the string TXT, txt, TEXT or text in it.

//.*(TXT|txt|TEXT|text).*$
    X=text,
    F=line,
    C=iso8859-1,
    D=ibm-1047

Example 2

The following profile matches files that have the extension .txt, .TXT, .c, .C, .h, .H, .log, .LOG, .conf or .CONF. Code set conversion from ASCII to EBCDIC is performed.

.*\\.(txt|TXT|c|C|h|H|log|LOG|conf|CONF)$
    X=text,
    F=line,
    C=iso8859-1,
    D=ibm-1047

Example 3

The following profile matches binary files with extensions .gz, .Z, .tar and .bin.

.*\\.(gz|Z|tar|bin)$
    X=bin,
    F=stream

Example 4

This profile matches all files and data set names. Data is transferred in text format and code set conversion from ASCII to EBCDIC is performed.

.*$             
    X=text,
    F=line,
    C=iso8859-1,
    D=ibm-1047

Example 5

This profile specifies that record truncation is allowed. Data is transferred in text format and code set conversion from ASCII to EBCDIC is performed.

.*$
    X=text,
    F=line,
    U=yes,
    C=iso8859-1,
    D=ibm-1047

	Note
	With truncation, data loss may occur.

Enabling Example File Transfer Profiles

File transfer profiles are not enabled by default. File transfer profiles can be enabled by copying the example profile file /opt/tectia/etc/ssh_ftadv_config.example to /opt/tectia/etc/ssh_ftadv_config (globally for all users) or $HOME/.ssh2/ssh_ftadv_config (for a specific user).

> cp /opt/tectia/etc/ssh_ftadv_config.example /opt/tectia/etc/ssh_ftadv_config