[Planetlab-devel] questions abouting running an independent myplc

Thu May 22 13:35:50 EDT 2008

Hi Sue,

Wifi for use as the primary network is already supported in MyPLC via
the NodeNetworkSettings API calls.

Support for a 3G modem would clearly be a nice addition.  I suppose
discussing what needs to be done on here on devel at planet-lab.org is a
good place to begin.  After we've discussed the scope of your changes
and have had a look at a prototype, I (or anyone else at PLC) can accept
patches and add them to our SVN.

A few questions:
1 - What kind of device does the 3G modem show up as on a standard Linux
machine?  Is it a serial interface one would run PPP over?

2 - I have used a WAN card before (GPRS modem) and it required loading a
firmware (via hotplug) before the device could be detected by the
kernel.  Does this card require any special drivers or initialization
before use?

Aside from bootstrapping the device, and perhaps setting up PPP, the
attributes necessary to support the device by the API already exist.
The additions to make use of the attributes in the BM would likely be
small and mostly involve writing the proper network init scripts.
Additions to NM will likely be unnecessary.

Faiyaz Ahmed

Sue Moon wrote:
> Marc, Scott, Thierry, and Roberto,
> Thanks all for your replies!
> 
> We'd like to replace the role of Ethernet with a wireless interface,
> be it WiFI or a 3G modem.
> 
>>> - Dynamic IP address support
>> 1) we don't have a dynDNS solution to automatically register and
>> update a node's hostname<->ipaddr binding,
>> 2) the registered ipaddr is currently a component that is part of the
>> node key that is used to authenticate the node to MyPLC,
>> 3) we currently do not dynamically update a slice's /etc/resolv.conf
>> if dns servers are changed dynamically, and
>> 4) ssh issues when the ipaddr changes.
>> The first three require some engineering presumably on both our
>> BootManager and NodeManager (and ideally volunteers to do this).
> 
> We volunteer to work on BootManager and NodeManager for the various
> scenarios
> we envision for our case.  Whom should we contact?
> 
> -Sue
> 
> 
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: devel-bounces at planet-lab.org [mailto:devel-bounces at planet-lab.org]
>> On Behalf Of Roberto Canonico
>> Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2008 5:20 AM
>> To: PlanetLab Development; Keon Jang
>> Cc: alessio.botta at unina.it
>> Subject: Re: [Planetlab-devel] questions abouting running an independent
>> myplc
>>
>> Hello Keon and all,
>> here at Univ. of Napoli, in the context of the European OneLab
>> research project,
>> we managed to support (at least in a primitive way) UMTS/HSDPA PCMCIA
>> cards
>> in a PlanetLab-derived deployment.
>> Access to these nodes is not open so far, but the pieces of software
>> needed for this purpose have been integrated in the OneLab codebase,
>> thans to the support of Thierry Parmentelat.
>> The biggest problem we found are:
>> - one conceptual: how to share the card among experiments;
>> - one practical: how to run commands that need root privileges.
>> While the second problem has been solved with the use of vsys
>> the second problem was solved in a first-come-first-served approach.
>> More complex time-dependent policies have been investigated but not
>> implemented so far.
>> You may find more info in the following two public deliverables
>> D4B.1 and D4B.2 available on the www.one-lab.org web site
>> in the "Public Deliverables" section.
>> In case you desired more info on this, please do not hesitate to
>> contact either me or Alessio and Giovanni.
>> Best regards
>> Roberto
>>
>>
>> Quoting Keon Jang <keonjang at gmail.com>:
>>
>>> Hi Thierry and Marc,
>>> Thanks for the reply.
>>> I'm Keon and Sue is my advisor.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 1:43 AM, Thierry Parmentelat
>>> <thierry.parmentelat at sophia.inria.fr> wrote:
>>>> On May 19, 2008, at 5:16 PM, Marc E. Fiuczynski wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hello Sue,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On May 14, 2008, at 9:20 PM, Sue Moon wrote:
>>>>
>>>> - What versino of MyPLC should we run?
>>>>
>>>> I don't know for the Princeton build, but here at Onelab we publish the
>>>> 'stable' builds that relate to 4.2 at
>>>> http://build.one-lab.org/4.2/
>>>> I expect to build an rc3 in the next coming days, that might well be
>> the
>>>> final 4.2 release
>>>> the combination that you want to check first is probably
>>>> planetlab-4.2-rc2.1lab-f8-32/
>>>>
>>>>   We have tried the f8/v4.2 (May 12) build-out.
>>>>
>>>>   We could not create a user nor a site.
>>>>
>>>>   What is the most reliable version at this point?
>>>>
>>>> The web gui that is part of the MyPLC release currently does not
>> include a
>>>> web page to create sites.  Site creation is currently handled offline
>> for
>>>> the public PlanetLab, and for this reason there was a decision in the
>> past
>>>> to not include this in the current MyPLC web gui.  You can certainly
>> create
>>>> sites using the API.   I will bring this up with Reid (our resident web
>> gui
>>>> person) to see whether we should include a site creation page as part
>> of the
>>>> web gui release in MyPLC.
>>>>
>>>> You should have been able to create a user given the default site.
>> Again,
>>>> if its not there you can do so via the API.
>>>>
>>>> I believe the onelab build has more flexibility for this kind of things
>>>> you may either directly use
>>>> onelab-4.2-rc2.1lab-f8-32/
>>>> or alternately just pick the PLCWWW rpm in there and use it to replace
>> the
>>>> one that comes with the planetlab build
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> - MyPLC user's guide seems to be out of date.
>>>>
>>>>  Any plan to update it soon?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Need to add this to our to do this.
>>>>
>>>> I've done that 2 weeks ago; it took a while until the changes made it
>> into
>>>> the build as part of the new myplc-docs package (so I think the 12 may
>> build
>>>> was still missing that), but with recent builds you should have the
>> right
>>>> stuff available at
>>>> <yourplc>/db/doc/myplc.php
>>>> <yourplc>/planetlab/doc/myplc.pdf
>>>> <yourplc>/planetlab/doc/myplc.html
>>>> If there remains any significantly inaccurate information in here,
>> please
>>>> let me know
>>>>
>>>> - Dynamic IP address support
>>>>
>>>>  We read somewhere that dynamic IP support is one of the
>>>>
>>>>  future to-do items.  Is there any progress on it?
>>>>
>>>> I'm backing Marc's question here, it'd help if you were more explicit
>> on
>>>> what you mean by 'dynamic IP'
>>>>
>>> By dynamic IP address, we mean dynamically allocated IP address.
>>> This is the case when we use commercial network such as ADSL or 3G
>>> wireless networks.
>>>
>>>> - In order to use a non-ethernet network interface,
>>>>
>>>>  what parts in the bootscript should be modified?
>>>>
>>>> Good question.  I don't think we've ever done this.  Thierry @ OneLab
>> used
>>>> WiFi at one point.  Would need to dig deeper to figure this out.  Out
> of
>>>> curiosity, what kind of device are you using?
>>>>
>>>> right, what sort of device are you thinking about ?
>>>>
>>> We're thingking about using 3G(CDMA/HSDPA) modems.
>>> Big difference is this kind of modem does not have a MAC addresss.
>>> It requires different initialization process compared to ethernet,
>>> and also requires to re-establish connection when it is lost.
>>>
>>>> Marc
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>>
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>>
>>
>> ===========================================
>> Prof. Ing. Roberto Canonico
>> Email: roberto.canonico at unina.it
>> Phone: +39 081 768 3831
>> Fax: +39 081 768 3816
>> Web:   http://wpage.unina.it/rcanonic
>> Universita' di Napoli Federico II
>> Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica
>> Via Claudio 21, 80125, Napoli - Italy
>> ===========================================
>>
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