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CANFAR Science Platform Release 2026.3

October 23, 2026

CanfarSP 2026.3

✨ New Features

  • The Science Portal has a refreshed interface.
  • When the platform provides metrics, the Science Portal shows usage for the platform, for users, and for Sessions.
  • Platform metrics include GPUs when the platform has them.
  • All Session types have shared memory at /dev/shm.
  • Web Terminal Session titles include the Session ID.

🐍 Python Client & CLI (v1.5.0+)

CanfarSP 2026.3 ships with v1.5.0 of the canfar Python client and CLI. Upgrade an existing installation with:

uv tool upgrade canfar
# or: pip install -U canfar

On Intel Macs, install canfar without building cryptography from source:

uv tool install canfar --no-build-package cryptography

CANFAR Data access beta

CANFAR Data is an fsspec-compliant storage adapter, available in beta in v1.5.0+ of the CANFAR Python client. The beta includes the canfar data commands and the Python storage tools in canfar.storage. Your existing storage permissions still apply.

List, inspect, copy, move, and remove files across local and remote storage (arc, vault, local). Every path starts with IDENTIFIER:/PATH. Remote storage requires authentication. local does not.

canfar login cadc
canfar data ls -lh arc:/home/USER
canfar data cp local:/data/input.fits arc:/home/USER/input.fits
canfar data cp -R vault:/project/cubes local:/data/cubes

In Python, call identifiers() to list configured storage and filesystem() to open a standard fsspec filesystem:

from canfar.storage import filesystem, identifiers

print(identifiers())  # ['arc', 'vault', 'local']

arc = filesystem("arc")
try:
    print(arc.ls("/home/USER", detail=False))
    arc.put_file("/data/input.fits", "/home/USER/input.fits")
    arc.get_file("/home/USER/result.fits", "/data/result.fits")
finally:
    arc.close()

See Data commands and the Python data guide for details.

Login, discovery, and server limits

canfar.login() and canfar.alogin() run browser-based device login from Python, save discovered servers, and return True when authenticated. Select your identity and server before launching Sessions:

import canfar
from canfar import authentication, server

canfar.login("cadc")
authentication.use("cadc")
server.use("canfar")

canfar server ls shows each server's CPU, memory, GPU, and interactive Session limits for fixed and flexible Sessions. canfar create checks --cpu, --memory, and --gpu against the active server's limits before sending the request:

                                          Known Servers

  Name     URI / URL                        Version   Flexible     Fixed        GPUs   Sessions
 ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  canfar   ivo://cadc.nrc.ca/skaha          v1        1-16 cores   1-16 cores   1-7    3
           https://ws-uv.canfar.net/skaha             4-32 GB      1-192 GB

Session management

You can renew interactive Sessions from the CLI or Python, as you can in the Science Portal:

canfar renew SESSION_ID

session.renew("SESSION_ID")

create, info, logs, events, destroy, destroy_with, and renew accept errors="raise", or you can set CANFAR_ERRORS=raise. These methods then run every request and raise SessionRequestError with the partial results if any request failed. The default logs failures and continues.

Updates for existing scripts and CLI workflows

  • Supported commands take -o json or -o yaml for machine output, replacing --json and --yaml. Stdout contains only the payload, and logs go to stderr.
  • -v logs one line per Science Platform HTTP response, -vv logs debug output, and --log-file PATH writes rotating JSON Lines logs.
  • canfar obtains CADC certificates directly and no longer installs cadcutils. If you run cadc-get-cert yourself, install it with pip install cadcutils.
  • fetch() accepts only kind and status. It no longer accepts view="all".

See What's new and the upgrade guide for the full client change list.

🐛 Platform Fixes

  • Desktop Sessions
    • Fixed a race condition that could build the Astro Software menu incorrectly.
    • Older CASA versions no longer fail to start.
    • Restored the browser in Desktop Sessions.
  • The Science Portal shows a clearer error when you are not authorized to launch Sessions.
  • Long cookies no longer block access to CARTA Sessions.
  • The Science Portal hides the Request GPU checkbox on the Fixed Session tab when the platform configuration declares no GPUs.

⚙️ Technical Changes

  • A new internal Metrics service collects platform, user, and Session usage, and can query external metrics collectors.
  • Session Jobs and Pods use consistent labels, so the Metrics service can attribute usage to each Session.
  • Registry lookups fail over to another server, so an unresponsive server no longer stalls discovery until it times out.

📦 Deployment Notes

  • Helm charts accept custom annotations.
  • posix-mapper fixes a caching issue that could make groups collide. A Keycloak-based posix-mapper is planned for CanfarSP 2026.4.
  • See the OpenCADC Deployments repository for updated deployment instructions.
  • The Harbor instance at https://images.canfar.net now runs version 2.15.0, which serves Helm charts only as standard OCI artifacts. Instead of adding chart repositories with helm repo add, install charts directly from their oci:// URLs with helm install.
  • The storageui chart is renamed to storage-ui. Install it from oci://images.opencadc.org/client/storage-ui. The last storageui chart is version 0.9.0; this release ships storage-ui 1.4.8.

The old method: 

helm repo add science-platform https://images.opencadc.org/chartrepo/platform
helm repo add science-client https://images.opencadc.org/chartrepo/client
helm repo update
helm install cavern science-platform/cavern
....
helm install storageui science-client/storageui
The new method: 
helm install cavern oci://images.opencadc.org/platform/cavern
helm install science-portal oci://images.opencadc.org/platform/science-portal
helm install skaha oci://images.opencadc.org/platform/skaha
helm install posix-mapper oci://images.opencadc.org/platform/posix-mapper
helm install storage-ui oci://images.opencadc.org/client/storage-ui

🔖 Releases

Python Client & CLI

Component Version
canfar 1.5.0

Helm Charts & Container Images

Component Helm Chart Version Container Image
cavern 0.10.7 0.10.4
skaha 1.10.2 1.6.0
posix-mapper 0.6.2 0.4.0
science-portal 2.3.0 2.3.0
storage-ui 1.4.8 1.4.4

Administrators and operators can find detailed upgrade and deployment guidance in the OpenCADC deployments docs.

💬 Contact & Support

For questions, feedback, account access, service incidents, or private data concerns, contact support@canfar.net. You can also ask questions in the CANFAR Discord.


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