Hello!  This page is meant to provide basic instructions for how to connect to the new data.competela.org server to facilitate student data transfer to and from the CompeteLA project.  The intended audience are IT professionals.

 

Important:  The data and file names have changed slightly.  After reviewing this page, see the instructions for "Phase 2".

 

Short Codes

Your school has a "short code" associated with it, which will be used in our examples.  For example, Grambling's short code is "gram".  Louisiana Tech's short code is "latech", and so on.  Short codes are always lowercase.

This table displays the current university short codes:

University Name	SHORT CODE
Grambling	gram
Louisiana Tech	latech
McNeese	mcneese
Nicholls	nicholls
Northwestern	nsula
Southeastern	southeastern
UL Lafayette	ull
UL Monroe	ulm
University of New Orleans	uno

 

Private Keys

You will need the appropriate key file to upload or download files from the data.completela.org server.  If these files (one for Putty, one for OpenSSH) have not been provided to you, contact CompeteLA to request them.  They will be transmitted to you in a password protected (AES encryption) zip file.  The password will be sent to you separately.  You will need a (free) program like 7zip to enter the password to unpack the files.

Make sure to keep these files safe; whomever possesses them will be able to gain access to your data uploaded to data.competela.org.

 

Downloading CompeteLA Data

SFTP/SCP server/hostname: data.competela.org (port 22)
Username: fileimportuser_shortcode  (whatever your short code is). 

For the sake of automation, there is no passphrase on the key.  If you would like to add a passphrase, please contact CompeteLA and a new set of keys will be generated for you.

The file you will wish to download is:  /import_files/student_data_pulled_from_crm.shortcode.csv

 

Uploading Data for CompeteLA

Once you have made modifications, upload to this exact path and filename:  /import_files/competela_students.csv, replacing the file if it already exists.

 

How to Automate Uploads and Downloads from Windows 7, 10, 11, etc.

We will be using the free scp program "pscp", which is part of the free Putty download package. You will want the latest version for Windows, mostly likely 64-bit x86.  You will want to use the Putty (.ppk) version of the key file if using the pscp command.

Its general usage is as follows:

       pscp -i "C:\path\to\key.ppk" source destination

 

To Download data from CompeteLA:

Create a .bat file and enter something like the following (no line breaks on the line starting with "pscp"):

echo ****  Downloading from data.competela.org.....

pscp -i "C:\MyCompeteLA Files\ssh_keys\data.competela__fileimportuser_shortcode.ppk" -P 22 fileimportuser_shortcode@data.competela.org:/import_files/student_data_pulled_from_crm.shortcode.csv C:\download\location\.

echo ****  ... Finished downloading.

 

To Upload data to CompeteLA:

Similarly, create a .bat file and enter something like the following (no line breaks on the line starting with "pscp"):

echo *** Uploading competela_students.csv file to data.competela.org ...

pscp -i "C:\MyCompeteLA files\ssh_keys\data.competela__fileimportuser_gram.ppk" -P 22 C:\path\to\competela_students.csv fileimportuser_shortcode@data.competela.org:/import_files/.

echo *** Finished upload.

 

Automating

You can use Window's Task Scheduler to set these .bat files to run at different times of the day, or you can manually run them yourself.

 

How to Automate Uploads and Downloads From Linux/Unix*

If you are using one of these systems, it is likely you are already comfortable with the basic command-line tools.  Uploading and downloading is very similar to the Windows method.  We will use the built-in "scp" command, instead of having to download "pscp".  But otherwise the syntax looks identical.  Use the OPENSSH version of the key, not the putty version.

Ex:  scp -i path/to/opensshkey.pem source destination

See the Windows example above for more information, using the command "scp" instead of "pscp".  And, instead of a .bat file, we would place our code in a shell script.

Automation can be achieved using the crontab.  (Ex:  sudo crontab -e) and scheduling the scp command (or shell script) to run at a particular time or multiple times.

*Apple MacOS is based on Unix, and many of the same instructions apply.

 

Extra Help

Please contact CompeteLA if you need extra technical assistance with any of these instructions.