[AG-TECH] notes and thoughts on AG2.1.2b on win32

Lewis Grantham l.grantham at ucl.ac.uk
Mon Nov 10 09:05:37 CST 2003


dear AG

been working through AG2.1.2 again, and have some more notes and comments for
you:

(Bugzilla Bug 742 i guess): defaultWindows configurations for AGServiceManager
only loaded when using VenueClient --personalNode. (and an ANL/AG issued cert..
others proxy ok, but you cant manage node)

Starting AGServiceManager and AGNodeService manually wont load any config, or
add any services at all.

Yes, the menu shortcut on windows includes the --personalNode argument, and self
starts AGServiceMAnager and AGNodeservice on a single machine I presume. 

But what of trying (mistakenly it seems) to test rigs for multimachine set ups
(i.e. the majority of GRID nodes built to recommended AG specs)?

how do we fully test a multimachine config and successful (default) service
loading?

it is possible to start things manually, add services from the venue client and
correctly connect to at least the ag2 server it seems, but not something I can
see catching on for ease of use.

But a personal node would look wrong too, how to link the producer and consumer
for example?  

Users will only truly navigate with the one display machine, so am stuck with no
synchronisation with other servers (our encoder for example).

and thats my main concern here. how do I establish reliable service placements
across a multimachine node?  

Seems I cannot autorun services at boot time - they will all eventually fail if
a short proxy is in use, and with many aspects of node management now in the
venueclient, these are easily changed by individuals.

with no grid proxy init, PASSPHRASE and proxy creation is commandline based on a
variable user ID.. ok - now whos going to bother fixing up the other machines no
one ever runs the venue client on..  

each facility user must by necessity start and configure all services themselves
to make sure a valid and consistent proxy is about?

these points are starting to place VERY high training and staffing requirements
on any planned (multi machine) node use, and would seem more suited to self
customisable PIGs and single machine nodes only (say floating, departmental
laptops or similar).

I cant visualise this on a multimachine set up at the moment without a lot of
manual intervention - have I missed a big part or hint here? 

many thanks for your time amnd trouble in this
lewis

-- 
......................................................
Lewis Grantham LLB MSc                                   
Project Leader, Multimedia Unit                          
Media Resources, UCL (University College London)         
Windeyer Building, Cleveland Street, London W1T 4JF

                                                         
Tel: (+44) 020 7679 9258    Fax: (+44) 020 7580 0995     
URL: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/mediares/mmedia




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