Content Management and Capture

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 File path on NFS storage

Leonardo Lavarini's profile image
Leonardo Lavarini posted Thu November 21, 2024 09:52 AM

Hello, i have several Filenet object stores, each with an NFS storage area mounted on it. I need to retrive the path of the phisical files located in the storage area, e.g. /FN10/FN11/... So far, i've used a scraper that navigates the file system, but it's very slow. It is possible to obtain the file path through an API? Thank you.

Gerold Krommer's profile image
Gerold Krommer IBM Champion

I had this request several times, but as far as I remember the path isn't stored anywhere and if it is it is so cleverly hidden and encrypted I couldn't spot it.

In this cases (for whatever reason we needed them, this is a whole different story) we had to parse the filenames from the error logs and do something with it.

I have something to extract the Clip ID of a Centera stored document from the content referal blob, but that doesn't not help you, but if the path is somewhere it is there :-(.

Doesn't help... I know,

/Gerold

Stephen Weckesser's profile image
Stephen Weckesser

Short answer is no. At one time the filename matched the docid and the folders were calculated by bit shifting the id - an common technique but whose implementation varies. Some folders are 2 level and others are 3 level so you would have to decode both. However, the uuid parts of the filename are also swapped in later versions so it's no longer a direct match. Enumerating the files on disk will no longer work. Even if you can decode the path and name, if the storage uses encryption (shame on you if not), the documents will still need to be retrieved through filenet to decrypt them. That renders md5 and other approaches moot.

The ClipID Gerold mentions is used with Fixed Content Devices such as Centera or DELL ECS that function as a 'black box' and not a filesystem. They use a "CAS" API to retrieve docs based on the CLIPID. For filesystems, the consistency checker, xcheck, does log the path if there's a problem file. It can be handy to know if there are any missing files prior to a migration but the xml is too verbose to be useful. You can build a parser to extract the path or use mine.. (see: https://www.applied-logic.com/reformat-consistency-check-reports/). I have used that approach just to account for missing docs in a storage area when migrating. I would not use it to enumerate the files for export - On a Fiber SAN, we could check 80 docs/second but using NFS it tends to time out and never finish so it wouldn't work for you. In the case where there are several storage areas, I find using a different process for each is the simplest to get better performance.