Castor

Beaver!

Update: 3-26-2014

Castor 2.0 has been officially released with a Mac GUI installer. The github repository has been updated and the latest version can be grabbed from github. I’ve created a new repository for V2.0 here.

Castor is a script package that ties Archiware PresSTORE to Squarebox CatDV. This project started as a how-to guide on my blog, but I found that it likely needed to be a little bit easier to work with.

After spending some time working with customers using it, I also realized that it was not very verbose in any errors that occurred, so tracking down problems for users was problematic.

Because of this, Castor was born as a second generation toolkit to provide connectivity.

For users that want the latest version of this package, I would recommend grabbing the raw source from github.  While I try to keep the installer up to date, it is not necessarily the latest build of the script package.

New features

  • Much stronger logging across all scripts
  • Double-click installer for package files
  • Configuration script for simplified setup
  • Discreet config files for easier modification and updates
  • A beaver for a logo

I will keep this page up to date with changes that are being made and the latest version of the Castor toolkit can be downloaded here as well.  If you are interested in contributing to Castor, please feel free.  The source for the package itself is currently available on github.

I have removed the installer .pkg as it was out of date. Soon to come is a formal install shell script that should work on all *nix platforms.

19 thoughts on “Castor

  1. Hi Mike,

    Does the current iteration of Castor work with CatDV v10 Workgroup Server?

    About to do an install with this setup and need to know if the integration with PT and CDV will work. Feel free to contact me offline on email about the setup

    Cheers

    Jamie

  2. Jamie, I have tested and the current build of Castor does work with CatDV 10, Worker 5, and Server 6.7.

    I have an updated build as well that I haven’t had time to document or make public that includes information sends from PresSTORE back to the CatDV database for tape information and volume information. If you are interested in giving this a shot (sans documentation), let me know and I can get you a working build.

    1. Castor will work with Windows, but you will need to install Strawberry Perl and modify all of the paths to be proper for windows. The configurator script also does not work in windows currently, so if you are going to attempt this in Windows it is best to have a really solid idea of how it all works.

      I’m currently working on a 2.0 build that auto-detects platform in all the scripts, so no manipulation is needed between Mac/Windows.

  3. In the how-to guide on your blog is said, that Castor works with CatDV Enterprise Server. And what if I’ve got a workgroup server version?

  4. Hi Mike!

    Firstly Thanks a lot for this plugin on Mac!

    I would like to use this plugin on PC. However, even changing the path, I encounter problem ..
    For example, when the “aw-queue.pl” file called nsdchat.

    Could you contact me by email if possible?

    Thanks in advance for your help!

    1. Nicolas, if running on Windows the default location for nsdchat.exe is in C:\Program Files (x86)\Archiware\PresSTORE\bin\nsdchat.exe. If this has moved in your install, you’d have to update the nsdchat location in the aw-queue.pl script.

  5. Hi,

    thanks for you great work !

    Sorry for my question, maybe stupid, but does castor (and Archiware) have to be installed on the same computer as the worker, to have both access to the same scripts and txt files ?

    Thanks in advance !

    1. Jerome, different components are accessed by different applications, so if you aren’t running P5 and Worker on the same machine you will have to have a few things accessible to other systems:

      aw-queue.pl – needs to be accessible by P5 server
      catdv-xml.pl – needs to be accessible by P5 server
      catdv-preview.pl – needs to be accessible by P5 server
      record-update.pl – needs to be accessible by P5 server
      catdv2aw.pl – needs to be accessible by Worker Node server
      queues/* – needs to be writable by both P5 and Worker Node server
      logs/* – needs to be writeable by P5 server
      conf/* – needs to be accessible by P5 server and Worker Node server

      I’ve seen several people run Castor directly from a folder on the SAN as the paths match up at that point to all machines. Simply symlink the location on the SAN back to /Applications/Castor on the Worker/P5 servers and you should be good.

  6. Hello is this message board still active? I took over a job that uses castor to help catdv and prestore communicate. For some reason the restore evert 15 minutes is no longer working. Can someone please point me in the right direction as to what file in the castor folder determines how it tells prestore when to kick off a restore every 15 minutes and what the file path is to read from for the restore? Thanks

    1. Eric, two entire years late on this (what a two years it has been!). The timing document is a standard Mac plist file, so it lives in /Library/LaunchDaemons/ by default. Everything else is configurable in the config file. It has been quite a while since I’ve maintained Castor, but I do believe it still works.

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