perfsonar development work

[Guilherme Fernandes <>]

Loukik Kudarimoti wrote:
> Gijs Molenaar wrote:
> > Szymon Trocha schreef:
> > > Gijs Molenaar wrote:
> > >
> > > > In the minutes of
> > > >
> > > > http://wiki.perfsonar.net/jra1-wiki/index.php/MDM_perfSONAR_3.0_Conf_call_08_Jan_2008 
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > there is a common action note that developers should read the build 
> > > > guide with a note about RPM.
> > > >
> > > > Question> Where can I find this? It is not in the Wiki, or I can't 
> > > > find it. Search function in wiki is close to worthless.
> > >
> > > Hi Gijs,
> > >
> > > Look into SVN: trunk\perfsonar-doc\release-management
> >
> > Thanks Szymon, this has been very helpful. But there is still one 
> > question unanswered:
> >
> > I quote myself: "Question> I think this question has been asked 
> > before, but I still think it is very important. Do we still provide 
> > our own tomcat installation? If we build an RPM, why not depend on 
> > the tomcat of the distribution. This is making live so much easier, 
> > for developers and maintainers." I've taken a look at the tomcat 
> > installed by the perfsonar-tomcat package, and there isn't that much 
> > different, only the username/password fields in tomcat-users.xml had 
> > been removed and I had to add it again to use the manager.
I think the best person to say why it was started this way is Frederic. 
For what I know, we did our own tomcat rpm so we could use the version 
that was being used by the services (6.0.7). I think only tomcat 5.5 is 
available right now either in RPMs or in deb packages.

Besides this, I don't see any big issues using the standard packages of 
the systems, and it has benefits. But in this case we would have to do 
extensive testing to know that it is perfectly compatible. I would have 
some work on doing specific distribution scripts for the packages, since 
it's probable that RedHat's directory structure for the package will be 
different from Debian's, and etc.
> > Anyway, if we are going the 'build our own tomcat package way', why 
> > is everything installed in /home/perfsonar? The LSB (linux standard 
> > base) guide sort of describes that  all software packages that you 
> > don't know where to install should be put into '/opt'.
Another thing that should first be asked to Frederic. I know that right 
now we have a structure which doesn't requires root access for almost 
nothing (only for installing the packages). Maybe it is the case that 
the service might be installed in NOCs where the administration of the 
machines isn't made by the same person which are running the services 
(i.e. they wouldn't have root access for modifications). But otherwise, 
as Jochen suggested, an init script which changes the tomcat user would 
be sufficient regarding privileges of the running process.

I guess this is more of a MDM specific requirement?

Guilherme
> > - gijs
> Guilherme, can you please answer Gijs' questions?