The CernVM-FS python package allows for the inspection of CernVM-FS repositories using python. In particular to browse their file catalog hierarchy, inspect CernVM-FS repository manifests (a.k.a. .cvmfspublished files) and the history of named snapshots inside any CernVM-FS repository. The support for this package is low: best effort, and with very limited testing. Example Usage: import cvmfs repo = cvmfs.open_repository('http://cvmfs.fnal.gov/cvmfs/grid.cern.ch') print 'Last Revision:' , repo.manifest.revision , repo.manifest.last_modified root_catalog = repo.retrieve_catalog(repo.manifest.root_catalog) print 'Catalog Schema:' , root_catalog.schema for nested_catalog_ref in root_catalog.list_nested(): print 'Nested Catalog at:' , nested_catalog_ref.root_path print 'Listing repository' for full_path, dirent in repo: print full_path Example programs "big_catalogs" and "catdirusage" are supplied in the "utils" directory, which are also useful for figuring out where to split up the catalogs in a cvmfs repository. Rpms are available in the cvmfs-contrib yum repositories for EL6 & 7. See https://cvmfs-contrib.github.io for instructions to enable one of those repositories. Then to install simply do: # yum install -y python-cvmfsutils