perfsonar development work

[Frederic LOUI <>]

Hi all,
> > > 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.
Very good point. It would be very great to have perfsonar packages 
relying on the TOMCAT own distribution.
However, there was some issues that had to be solved/discussed and 
because of the short time frame
I chose to put everything in "perfsonar" home folder.  I'd like also to 
mention that I'm not a RPM guru nor a TOMCAT guru... ;-)

Of course, this can be reconsidered by the release management team but 
in that case you'll have to face the following issue:

1- PerfSONAR developer is using now 6.0.7 TOMCAT version and 
unfortunatly the TOMCAT version used by the PerfSONAR project is not 
always part of the distribution package.
   FreeBSD, Debian, Ubuntu, centOS, Redhat, Opensolaris have their own 
tomcat installation version.

2- Each TOMCAT distribution have their own tomcat installation and their 
respective specificities. I tried to use Ubuntu/Debian TOMCAT and faced 
a lot of issue with RRD-MA.
   I ended up in a situation where the RRD-MA was not functioning 
properly. (Security manager activated by default on debian based distrib,
   the distribution TOMCAT folder was broke down in several part of the 
filesystem with symlink, so I had to face many UNIX access right issues 
not taken into account by the PerfSONAR bundle installer
   etc. )
   To sum up, using the TOMCAT distribution package was not obvious for 
me and impose the developer to code the MA/MP in a way that follow the 
LSB. (i.e config file in /etc, log in /var/log etc.)

3- Considering multiple tomcat installation mean that both the release 
management team AND the developers to understand perfectly each 
distribution userland. (Solaris/Redhat/Debian/Ubuntu/Nexenta etc.)
   Which is not obvious.

4- Each apt-get update+apt-get upgrade or (urpmi equivalent) could break 
inadvertantly  the PerfSONAR packages and would force the developer to 
build a version corresponding to the one figuring in OS distribution.

5- During the MDM pilot, official version of TOMCAT was 6.0.4. This 
involved that all staff working in the Service Desk Team have to know 
each TOMCAT specificities that come with the distrib.

> 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.
You're totally right, but this involves to have a bundle installer 
script that take into account all the distribution OS targeted by PerfSONAR.
Maybe Guilherme could provide us an estimation of the effort to adapt 
this bundle installer script ?
> > > 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'.
Of course, this could be done. But for "simplicity and time" constarint 
everything was put on the perfsonar folder. Maybe the project could make 
a relocatable package so that the "--prefix" (i.e installation location)
is not static. This is definitly an improvement. But in that case the 
release management team would have also to consider BSD user land, 
OpenSolaris userland, MacOSX userland etc. (Which are not forcibly LSB 
compliant)
> > >
> 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?
Sorry, Guilherme maybe you could call me in order elaborate this issue ?
> Guilherme
> > > - gijs
> > Guilherme, can you please answer Gijs' questions?
The first step in providing PerfSONAR package is to demonstrate how RPM 
(and in general PAKAGING) could ease
PerfSONAR deployment because we had a lot of complaint from the end-user 
having spent 3 days for perfsonar installation.

Anyway, thanks for your suggestion. I tried to think about a quick 
solution in order to "ease" the deployment (developer+release management 
team+end user) for everyone.
But this is definitly a good point that we should discuss with the 
developers and the release management team during the ZAGREB meeting.
The packages building process can be improved and we welcome all people 
having a strong UNIX background.

If it is possible from your side (Guilherme and Gijs) , would it be 
possible for you to build the RRD-MA packages using tomcat part of the 
distribution:
* Fedora / rpm
* For UBUNTU (gutsy for example)/ deb
* FreeBSD / pkg

Observe and write a small feedback document regarding how to build 
PerfSONAR packages using the native TOMCAT distribution ?

Thanks in advance for your help ! :)
Best regards,

--
Frederic LOUI / GIP RENATER

Service de Suivi Operationnel / Metrologie & QoS
Network Operations Service / Metrology & QoS

Tel: +33 1 53 94 20 82 / Fax: +33 1 53 94 20 31
 http://www.renater.fr