Metafiles

HCP-FS presents individual metafiles for each piece of HCP-specific object metadata except owner. It doesn’t present individual metafiles for POSIX metadata. However, it does present one additional metafile that summarizes both the HCP-specific and POSIX metadata for an object. Metafiles contain either plain text or XML, so you can read them easily.

You can view and retrieve metafiles through the WebDAV, CIFS, and NFS protocols. You can also use these protocols to overwrite metafiles that contain the HCP-specific metadata you can change. By overwriting a metafile, you change the metadata for the corresponding object.

If an object has a default annotation or an ACL, HCP presents it as a metafile. HCP does not show other annotations as metafiles. You can add, replace, or delete the default annotation only with the REST API and WebDAV protocol. You can add, replace, or delete other annotations and ACLs only with the REST API.

For backward compatibility, HCP-FS also presents a metafile named tpof.txt. This metafile is superseded by dpl.txt.

HCP-FS presents these metafiles for objects:

created.txt

Contains the date the object was added to the namespace. This metafile contains two lines:

• The first line is the date expressed as the number of seconds since January 1, 1970.
• The second line is the date in this ISO 8601 format:

  yyyy-MM-ddThh:mm:ssZ

In this format, Z represents the offset from UTC and is specified as:

(+|-)hhmm

For example:

1326978027
2012-01-19T08:00:27-0500

You can view the content of this metafile, but you cannot change it.

dpl.txt

Contains the data protection level (DPL) for the object. The DPL is the number of copies of the object HCP must maintain in the repository to ensure the integrity and availability of the object.

For example:

2

You can view the content of this metafile, but you cannot change it.

hash.txt

Contains the name of the cryptographic hash algorithm used to generate the cryptographic hash value for the object, as well as the hash value itself. For example:

SHA-256
2BC9AE8640D50145604FB6CFC45A12E5561B40429174CE404A...

HCP calculates the hash value for an object from the object data.

You can view the content of this metafile, but you cannot change it.

index.txt

Contains the index setting for the object.

You can view and change the content of this metafile.

replication.txt

Indicates whether the object is replicated, in this format:

replicated=true|false

The value is true only when the object and all its metadata have been replicated. For example, if you add custom metadata to a replicated object, the content of the replicated.txt metafile changes to replicated=false. When the metadata is replicated, the value changes back to replicated=true.

You can view the content of this metafile, but you cannot change it.

retention.txt

Contains the retention setting for the object.

You can view and change the content of this metafile.

shred.txt

Contains the shred setting for the object.

You can view and change the content of this metafile.

core-metadata.xml

Contains a summary of the HCP-specific and POSIX metadata for the object. For example:

<core-metadata xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.hitachivantara.com
core-metadata-7_0.xsd">
<version>3</version>
<name>/images/wind.jpg</name>
<name-bytes>2F696D616765732F77696E642E6A7067
</name-bytes>
<object-type>File</object-type>
<creation-time>1326978027</creation-time>
<update-time>1326978027</update-time>
<change-time>1326978027</change-time>
<access-time>1326978027</access-time>
<uid>17</uid>
<gid>17</gid>
<mode>100544</mode>
<shred>false</shred>
<index>true</index>
<retention-value>1462979278</retention-value>
<retention-string>2016-05-11T11:07:58-0400 (DeptReg223,+7y)
</retention-string>
<retention-hold>false</retention-hold>
<size>238985</size>
<tpof>1</tpof>
<dpl>2</dpl>
<hash-scheme>SHA-256</hash-scheme>
<hash-value>0B86212A66A792A79D58BB18...</hash-value>
<retention-class>DeptReg223</retention-class>
<replicated>true</replicated>
<replicationCollision>false</replicationCollision>
<ingestProtocol>CIFS_NFS</ingestProtocol>
<owner></owner>
<domain></domain>
<has-acl>false</has-acl>
</core-metadata>

The version element identifies the version of the core-metadata.xml file.

The ingestProtocol element identifies the protocol through which the object was ingested.

You can view the content of this metafile, but you cannot change it.

To see the XML schema for this metafile, use this URL:

http://tenant-name.hcp-domain-name/static/core-metadata-7_0.xsd

custom-metadata.xml

Contains the custom metadata for the default annotation for the object. This metafile is present only when the object has a default annotation.

acl.xml

Contains the ACL for the object. This metafile is present only when the object has an ACL.

Objects can have an ACL only if the namespace is configured to allow it.