Claiming another small victory today! Why? Well, the Digital.Grinnell instance of IMI (Islandora Multi-Importer) module is customized so that choosing “*local” as an object ingest source invokes a hook function I created in our DG7 module. That hook enables IMI to “find” named files/content (things like PDFs, images, etc.) in the Grinnell College //STORAGE server. //STORAGE can be mounted as a CIFS (Common Internet File System) and used to drive ingest if the right package/drivers are made available to Islandora. That can be a little tricky in ISLE, but it’s manageable.

My process for providing CIFS access to //STORAGE and for mounting the objects went like this:

  1. Some time ago my colleagues and I created a directory on the server named //STORAGE/MEDIADB/DGIngest. It is password protected, as is all of //STORAGE, and URL-accessible.
  2. The aforementioned IMI ‘hook’ in DG7 is programmed to find content in a “local” directory named /mnt/storage. The code is such that it can find a named file within ANY path subordinate to this directory. So…
  3. Today I opened a terminal to my ISLE production host, DGDocker1.Grinnell.edu, and subsequently opened a terminal into its Apache container like so: docker exec -it isle-apache-dg bash.
  4. Inside the Aapache container terminal I executed the following, as “root”, to install a CIFS package: apt-get update; apt install -y cifs-utils. This was a success and need not be repeated unless I ever have to recreate the Apache container.
  5. Still in the Apache container terminal I mounted the target share using: mount -t cifs -o username=mcfatem //storage.grinnell.edu/MEDIADB/DGIngest /mnt/storage. I was subsequently prompted for my password and provided it.
  6. Eureka! It worked. My subsequent IMI ingests were able to successfully find content stored in the aforementioned directory and its subordinates.

And that’s a wrap. Until next time…