[Swift-devel] swiftconfig

[David Kelly]

Hello all,

I am working on a utility to modify configuration files called swiftconfig.
This is still in the early stages, so there is a lot of room for changes and
new ideas. I believe there is some overlap between this project and what
some other students will be doing this summer, so if anyone would like to
work with me on this, please feel free.

I envision swiftconfig as a simple text-based configuration program. It will
be written in Perl and use the curses library for easier editing. It should
hopefully make swift configuration a little easier and prevent silly
mistakes like typos in xml which could keep swift from running.  Everything
that can be done within the editor should also be able to be done directly
from the command line. This should make it easier to expand upon in the
future. For example, a web or GUI based application could be written fairly
quickly that would only need to call swiftconfig with the correct command
line options.

There are three files swiftconfig can modify: tc.data, sites.xml, and
auth.defaults.

The options for transformation mode include

    -host        # Host name
    -name      # Translation name
    -path        # Path to executable
    -profile     # Profile arguments, defaults to null
    -tcfile       # Location of tc file. If not specified, find tc.data
based on location of swift
    -overwrite # If a duplicate is found, overwrite the old entry without
prompting

Since platform and installation status are no longer used, they will default
to INTEL32::LINUX and INSTALLED.
Here is an example of swiftconfig in transformation mode.

$ swiftconfig -host localhost -name wc -path /usr/bin/wc

tc.data should then have the line:
localhost    wc    /usr/bin/wc    INSTALLED    INTEL32::LINUX    null

If there is already an entry with the name wc, it should prompt the user to
answer yes/no if the user wants to overwrite it (unless -overwrite is given)

For sites.xml, swiftconfig should allow the user to use existing examples or
specify their own. Here are the options:

    -template       # Use existing commented example for defaults (skynet,
teraport, etc)
    -entry            # Name of new entry (pool handle)
    -gridftp          # Specify gridftp url
    -jobuniverse  # Specify jobmanager universe
    -joburl           # Specify jobmanager url
    -jobmajor      # Specify jobmanager major value
    -jobminor      # Specify jobmanager minor value
    -directory      # Work directory
    -exprovider   # Execution provider
    -exmanager  # Execution job manager
    -exurl            # Execution url
    -remove        # Remove (comment out) an entry from sites.xml

So, for example suppose a user has the following entry in sites.xml by
default:

<!--
  <pool handle="teraport" >
    <gridftp  url="gsiftp://tp-grid1.uchicago.edu" />
    <jobmanager universe="vanilla" url="tp-grid1.uchicago.edu/jobmanager-pbs"
major="2" />
    <workdirectory >/home/tiberius/scratch/SWIFT-WORK</workdirectory>
  </pool>
-->

The command:

$ swiftconfig -template teraport

Which would uncomment that from sites.xml as is. The user could also modify
just a part of it:

$ swiftconfig -template teraport -directory /tmp

That should modify only the workdirectory and leave everything else the
same.

To create your own config, use -entry instead of -template

$ swiftconfig -entry mynetwork -gridftp ftp.foo -exprovider gt4 (.. and so
on)

The final mode of swiftconfig is for auth.log in ssh configurations.

    -auth        # Set to auth mode
    -sshhost    # Name of remote ssh host
    -sshmode    # Either password or passphrase
    -sshuser    # SSH username
    -sshpassword    # SSH password
    -sshpassphrase    # SSH passphrase
    -sshkey        # Location of SSH key

Any other ideas or suggestions on how swiftconfig should work are welcome.

David
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