To use the postprocessing service, an event system needs to be configured for all services. By default, ocis ships with a preconfigured nats service.

Postprocessing Functionality

The storageprovider service (storage-users) can be configured to initiate asynchronous postprocessing by setting the OCIS_ASYNC_UPLOADS environment variable to true. If this is the case, postprocessing will get initiated after uploading a file and all bytes have been received.

The postprocessing service will then coordinate configured postprocessing steps like scanning the file for viruses. During postprocessing, the file will be in a processing state where only a limited set of actions are available. Note that this processing state excludes file accessibility by users.

When all postprocessing steps have completed successfully, the file will be made accessible for users.

Storing Postprocessing Data

The postprocessing service needs to store some metadata about uploads to be able to orchestrate post-processing. When running in single binary mode, the default in-memory implementation will be just fine. In distributed deployments it is recommended to use a persistent store, see below for more details.

The postprocessing service stores its metadata via the configured store in POSTPROCESSING_STORE. Possible stores are:

memory: Basic in-memory store and the default.
redis-sentinel: Stores data in a configured Redis Sentinel cluster.
nats-js-kv: Stores data using key-value-store feature of nats jetstream
noop: Stores nothing. Useful for testing. Not recommended in production environments.
ocmem: Advanced in-memory store allowing max size. (deprecated)
redis: Stores data in a configured Redis cluster. (deprecated)
etcd: Stores data in a configured etcd cluster. (deprecated)
nats-js: Stores data using object-store feature of nats jetstream (deprecated)

Other store types may work but are not supported currently.

Note: The service can only be scaled if not using memory store and the stores are configured identically over all instances!

Note that if you have used one of the deprecated stores, you should reconfigure to one of the supported ones as the deprecated stores will be removed in a later version.

Store specific notes:

When using redis-sentinel, the Redis master to use is configured via e.g. OCIS_CACHE_STORE_NODES in the form of <sentinel-host>:<sentinel-port>/<redis-master> like 10.10.0.200:26379/mymaster.
When using nats-js-kv it is recommended to set OCIS_CACHE_STORE_NODES to the same value as OCIS_EVENTS_ENDPOINT. That way the cache uses the same nats instance as the event bus.
When using the nats-js-kv store, it is possible to set OCIS_CACHE_DISABLE_PERSISTENCE to instruct nats to not persist cache data on disc.

Additional Prerequisites for the Postprocessing Service

When postprocessing has been enabled, configuring any postprocessing step will require the requested services to be enabled and pre-configured. For example, to use the virusscan step, one needs to have an enabled and configured antivirus service.

Postprocessing Steps

The postporcessing service is individually configurable. This is achieved by allowing a list of postprocessing steps that are processed in order of their appearance in the POSTPROCESSING_STEPS envvar. This envvar expects a comma separated list of steps that will be executed. Currently known steps to the system are virusscan and delay. Custom steps can be added but need an existing target for processing.

Virus Scanning

To enable virus scanning as a postprocessing step after uploading a file, the environment variable POSTPROCESSING_STEPS needs to contain the word virusscan at one location in the list of steps. As a result, each uploaded file gets virus scanned as part of the postprocessing steps. Note that the antivirus service is required to be enabled and configured for this to work.

Delay

Though this is for development purposes only and NOT RECOMMENDED on production systems, setting the environment variable POSTPROCESSING_DELAY to a duration not equal to zero will add a delay step with the configured amount of time. ocis will continue postprocessing the file after the configured delay. Use the environment variable POSTPROCESSING_STEPS and the keyword delay if you have multiple postprocessing steps and want to define their order. If POSTPROCESSING_DELAY is set but the keyword delay is not contained in POSTPROCESSING_STEPS, it will be processed as last postprocessing step without being listed there. In this case, a log entry will be written on service startup to notify the admin about that situation. That log entry can be avoided by adding the keyword delay to POSTPROCESSING_STEPS.

Custom Postprocessing Steps

By using the envvar POSTPROCESSING_STEPS, custom postprocessing steps can be added. Any word can be used as step name but be careful not to conflict with exising keywords like virusscan and delay. In addition, if a keyword is misspelled or the corresponding service does either not exist or does not follow the necessary event communication, the postprocessing service will wait forever getting the required response to proceed and does not continue any other processing.

Prerequisites

For using custom postprocessing steps you need a custom service listening to the configured event system (see General Prerequisites)

Workflow

When defining a custom postprocessing step (eg. "customstep"), the postprocessing service will eventually send an event during postprocessing. The event will be of type StartPostprocessingStep with its field StepToStart set to "customstep". When the service defined as custom step receives this event, it can safely execute its actions. The postprocessing service will wait until it has finished its work. The event contains further information (filename, executing user, size, ...) and also requires tokens and URLs to download the file in case byte inspection is necessary.

Once the service defined as custom step has finished its work, it should send an event of type PostprocessingFinished via the configured events system back to the postprocessing service. This event needs to contain a FinishedStep field set to "customstep". It also must contain the outcome of the step, which can be one of the following:

delete: Abort postprocessing, delete the file.
abort: Abort postprocessing, keep the file.
retry: There was a problem that was most likely temporary and may be solved by trying again after some backoff duration. Retry runs automatically and is defined by the backoff behavior as described below.
continue: Continue postprocessing, this is the success case.

The backoff behavior as mentioned in the retry outcome can be configured using the POSTPROCESSING_RETRY_BACKOFF_DURATION and POSTPROCESSING_MAX_RETRIES environment variables. The backoff duration is calculated using the following formula after each failure: backoff_duration = POSTPROCESSING_RETRY_BACKOFF_DURATION * 2^(number of failures - 1). This means that the time between the next round grows exponentially limited by the number of retries. Steps that still don't succeed after the maximum number of retries will be automatically moved to the abort state.

See the cs3 org for up-to-date information of reserved step names and event definitions.

CLI Commands

Resume Postprocessing

If postprocessing fails in one step due to an unforseen error, current uploads will not be retried automatically. A system admin can instead run a CLI command to retry the failed upload which is a two step process:

First find the upload ID of the failed upload.

ocis storage-users uploads list

Then use the restart command to resume postprocessing of the ID selected.

ocis postprocessing restart -u <uploadID>

Instead of starting one specific upload, a system admin can also restart all uploads that are currently in a specific step. Examples:

ocis postprocessing restart # Restarts all uploads where postprocessing is finished, but upload is not finished
ocis postprocessing restart -s "finished" # Equivalent to the above
ocis postprocessing restart -s "virusscan" # Restart all uploads currently in virusscan step