About the Files Connector

This page discusses:

What is a Files Connector?

You add a Files connector when you want to import files from your sources, such as:

  • Local filesystems (ex. D:\CAD\OtherProject)

  • Network filesystems (ex. \\server\cad_files)

  • Remote filesystems - see “Remote filesystems deployment” in the OnePart Installation Guide

In all cases, you can:

  • configure several paths to crawl

  • exclude paths

  • crawl based on filename extensions (for example, to exclude unwanted file extensions such as log files)

To import files located on filesystems, you can create:

  • a single Files connector with multiple paths or

  • multiple Files connectors, for example, for independent scheduling needs.

    Note: As of R2016x R1, OnePart no longer requires the SDC Connector for consolidation needs.

OnePartTemplate

If necessary, you can manually create the connectors in the Administration Console using the pre-configured Files connector, OnePartTemplate, that ships with OnePart. However, we highly recommend that you use the OnePart Console to create your sources since it automatically configures the security and Consolidation Server requirements.

Important: Do NOT delete this connector, nor use it to index files. Instead, create new connectors based on this pre-configured Files connector.

Therefore, in this section we will copy the OnePartTemplate connector’s configuration to keep the pre-configured “exclude rules” that stop unwanted files such as hidden and temporary files from being indexed. However, we will change its name, edit the paths for the files to be indexed, and add additional rules.

Limitations

The following limitations must be considered when implementing a Files connector:

  • Windows servers have some limitations handling multiple connections to the same fileshare from different windows sessions.

  • OnePart cannot access remote files on a Unix platform if they are mounted with the option directio. When this option is used, the Files connector cannot import files within this filesystem. This is the case for CIFS (Common Internet File System) mount points, as directio is defined as the default setting. You must explicitly define the nodirectio option for this case. For more information, see the "Linux man page" for the Unix command: mount.cifs(8).

File Access

Local file access

When you create a Files connector, you must ensure that OnePart has the necessary privileges to crawl the filesystem.

By default, the privileges are those of the service account used to install OnePart. A different login / password can be set. See About the Files Connector.

On a Windows server, OnePart often runs using the Local System user account, which has no access to network filesystems. If you want the OnePart user to have privileges to access network files, you will have to configure it to run with a domain user account.

Direct File Access

OnePart supports Direct File Access (DFA) on your filesystems for enhanced import capabilities on local, unsecured files when advised by your OnePart expert.

If you need to enable this feature, you can edit the Advanced connector configuration in the Administration Console.

Select the Direct File Access option as shown below in Advanced connector configuration > PushAPI Filters > Item 2: XCV Convert PushAPIFilter and apply the configuration.



Network file access

If your files are not on the OnePart server, OnePart must access the files remotely. Your network administrator must ensure that the filesystem to be imported is shared on the network and you have sufficient privileges as follows:

  • You can crawl a Unix remote filesystem if it is shared on the network. You can share filesystems on the network using SAMBA (with CIFS support) on the Unix machine, export the corresponding share to the Windows machine, and then mount this share as a regular Windows share.

  • Whether or not the network filesystem is hosted on Windows or UNIX, the OnePart user account is used to crawl the filesystem. Verify this account has the necessary permissions to crawl the remote filesystem. The account must be valid for the domain. See File read permissions.

File read permissions

In order to scan a network share such as \\yourfileshare\public\caddata\ (with the Files connector) you must:

  • make sure your network share is accessible (at least in Read-only) for the user account OnePart is running as, OR

  • change the Windows service login account to an account that has access to the network share. Go to Properties > Log on of the “Exalead Exalead CloudView - onepart” service, for example, and use Log On as option. Restart this service.

    Note: OnePart does not currently support all network drive configurations such as X:\myproject