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ecBox : ECMWF's file sharing service

Intro

ecBox is a file-sharing service developed to replace the legacy FTP service (ftp.ecmwf.int). It enables users to share files both within and outside ECMWF in a secure manner.

The primary purpose of ecBox is to facilitate the sharing of files — typically those related to research activities (e.g., documents, experiment inputs, and outputs) — with others, both inside and outside ECMWF. You can think of ecBox as a “pen drive” for ad-hoc file sharing.
ecBox is not intended for sharing operational data on a regular or scheduled basis.
ecBox should not be used or relied upon as part of any critical or production workflow.

ecBox service can be accessed and its contents can be managed via:
- web interface
- general command-line tools such as rclone, curl, lftp etc.

ecBox Terminology

Below are some the terminology used in the ecBox docs.

ecBox contents

This refers to the files and folders that are uploaded to ecBox site which are shared with others.

ecBox URL

This is the URL used to access ecBox site and manage its contents. It is of the form https://sites.ecmwf.int/<space>/<name>/s/dav/

site owner

Person with a valid ECMWF email id who created an ecBox site

token

A token is also referred by many names http-token, access-token, http-access-token. Tokens allow users to interact with the ecBox site securely and with controlled permissions. Tokens can have a defined validity period, after which they become invalid. There are two categories of token:
- master token : token created automatically when an ecBox site is created. It has admin privileges and can perform all the admin operations like managing site, managing site contents, managing other tokens etc. At any point, only one master token exists. Site owner can revoke it to automatically generate a new master token.
- user token: token created by the ecBox site owner with either Read-Only (RO) access or Read-Write (RW) access to ecBox contents. This is the token to be shared with the users who needs access to the files and folders stored on ecBox site. Site owner can create as many user tokens as needed (usually one per user). ecBox site will not store these user tokens and it is the resposibility of the site owner to store them elsewhere. All the user tokens are linked to the master token (used to create the user tokens) and revoking the master token will invalidate all the user tokens.

Content Management

Check the prerequisites below before going through the different ways of managing ecBox contents.

Prerequisite

To interact with ecBox (web or CLI), the following information is required:
- ecBox URL: This is the URL to access ecBox via web browser. It is of the form https://sites.ecmwf.int/<space>/<name>/s/dav/
- space: Defaults to ecbox
- name: Name of the ecBox site. Set by the site owner (ECMWF staff who created the ecBox site)
- token: Access token (also referred to as an HTTP token) required for authentication

Approaches

ecBox contents can be managed either by: