Transferring Files to an OBC

Once a satellite is in orbit, the file transfer service can be used to transfer files both to and from the ground.

Pre-Requisites

We’ll be using the file transfer client in order to communicate with the file transfer service on our OBC, which is automatically included with the Kubos SDK (as of v1.8.0). As a result, this tutorial assumes that all commands will be run from within an instance of the SDK.

Syntax

The file transfer client has the following command syntax:

kubos-file-client (upload | download) source-file [target-file] [options]

Required arguments:

  • Operation to perform

    • upload - Transfer source-file on the local host to target-file location on the remote target
    • download - Transfer source-file on the remote target to target-file location on the local host

  • source-file - The file to be transferred. May be a relative or absolute path.

Optional arguments:

  • target-file - Final destination path for the transferred file. If not specified, the root file name from source-file will be used and the file will be placed in the current directory of the destination.
  • -h {host IP} - Default: 0.0.0.0. IP address of the local host to use.
  • -r {remote IP} - Default: 0.0.0.0. IP address of the file transfer service to connect to.
  • -p {remote port} - Default: 7000. UDP port of the file transfer service to connect to.

Sending a File to an OBC

We’ll start by transferring a file to our OBC. For this tutorial, we’ll be transferring the application file that was created as part of the mission application tutorial to the kubos user’s home directory on the OBC.

We’ll need to specify the OBC’s IP address and the port that the file transfer service is listening on. By default, this is port 8008.

Our transfer command should look like this:

$ kubos-file-client upload /home/vagrant/my-app/my-mission-app.py /home/kubos/my-mission-app.py -r 10.0.2.20 -p 8008

The output from the client should look like this:

16:55:56 [INFO] Starting file transfer client
16:55:56 [INFO] Uploading local:/home/vagrant/new-user/my-mission-app.py to remote:/home/kubos/my-mission-app.py
16:55:56 [INFO] -> { 768720, 62c3491309b0bf9af5b367bea18471b8, 1 }
16:55:56 [INFO] -> { 768720, export, 62c3491309b0bf9af5b367bea18471b8, /home/kubos/my-mission-app.py, 33277 }
16:55:56 [INFO] <- { 768720, 62c3491309b0bf9af5b367bea18471b8, false, [(0, 1)] }
16:55:56 [INFO] -> { 768720, 62c3491309b0bf9af5b367bea18471b8, 0, chunk_data }
16:55:58 [INFO] <- { 62c3491309b0bf9af5b367bea18471b8, true }
16:55:58 [INFO] <- { 768720, true }
16:55:58 [INFO] Operation successful

The file transfer service maintains a temporary storage directory with the data from transferred files. As a result, if you run the upload command again, you should see a slightly truncated output:

16:15:08 [INFO] Starting file transfer client
16:15:08 [INFO] Uploading local:/home/vagrant/new-user/my-mission-app.py to remote:/home/kubos/my-mission-app.py
16:15:08 [INFO] -> { 184278, 62c3491309b0bf9af5b367bea18471b8, 1 }
16:15:08 [INFO] -> { 184278, export, 62c3491309b0bf9af5b367bea18471b8, /home/kubos/my-mission-app.py, 33277 }
16:15:08 [INFO] <- { 62c3491309b0bf9af5b367bea18471b8, true }
16:15:08 [INFO] <- { 184278, true }
16:15:08 [INFO] Operation successful

Receiving a File from an OBC

Next, we’ll request that the OBC send us the log file that was created by running the on-command logic in our mission application:

$ kubos-file-client download /home/kubos/oncommand-output -r 10.0.2.20 -p 8008

We’re not specifying a destination file, which will result in the transferred file being saved as oncommand-output in our current directory.

The output from the client should look like this:

17:56:27 [INFO] Starting file transfer client
17:56:27 [INFO] Downloading remote: /home/kubos/oncommand-output to local: oncommand-output
17:56:27 [INFO] -> { import, /home/kubos/oncommand-output }
17:56:27 [INFO] <- { 796611, true, 1a564e8da7b83c2d6a2a44d447855f6d, 1, 33188 }
17:56:27 [INFO] -> { 796611, 1a564e8da7b83c2d6a2a44d447855f6d, false, [0, 1] }
17:56:27 [INFO] <- { 796611, 1a564e8da7b83c2d6a2a44d447855f6d, 0, chunk_data }
17:56:29 [INFO] -> { 796611, 1a564e8da7b83c2d6a2a44d447855f6d, true, None }
17:56:29 [INFO] -> { 796611, true }
17:56:29 [INFO] Operation successful

We can then check the contents of the transferred file:

$ cat oncommand-output
Current available memory: 496768 kB
Current available memory: 497060 kB
1970-01-01 01:11:23.947890: Current available memory: 496952 kB