perfSONAR User Q&A and Other Discussion

[Chris Welti <>]

Hi all,

I'm afraid I have to agree with Warren here.
I tried to get the java perfSONAR suite 1.0 running investing more than a
 day and I couldn't even get axis and exist running properly.
Unless there is a really simple way of installing perfSONAR, you're
not going to get this tool widely used.
And by simple, i mean _really_ simple, like a debian package that can
be installed via apt-get install, or something like make / make install,
or just a script that does ALL the installation tasks for you.
The point here is that I want to be able to just execute ONE programm
that does the installation for me. No worries about which paths to use
for the different tools, version numbers of programs, setting environment
variables, configuring port numbers to use, and so on. 
There are way to many steps involved in the installation process that can
go wrong.
The problem is of course that you are depending on java/tomcat/axis/exist
and you don't have control about it's configuration/installation.
Well, that's the downside of not having a stand-alone application.
The perl installation was much less of a hassle and is still running
fine here at SWITCH.

Regards,
Chris

Warren Matthews wrote:
> Hi All
> 
> I hate to whine but Eric and Jeff say I should call it feedback and send
> it to the list.
> 
> We've had a terrible time with perfSONAR. I want to give up. Actually we
> haven't even made it to trying to install perfSONAR. We haven't even got
> the prerequisites installed yet.
> 
> The real problem is we have no java expertise. I'm trying to get another
> student but that'll be at least a few more weeks. The other problem is
> we have to run RHEL. It is mandated by our director; Unfortunately our
> site license does not include the application server channel, so we
> don't get tomcat. Frankly, we're also not really interested in
> understanding the packages and being experts on various server software
> tools. We're network support staff, we want to measure and trouble-shoot
> the network. Trying to get perfSONAR set up has been a real pain.
> 
> Perhaps you will say we should wait for better documentation. But we
> would like to be an early adopter because we need to offer monitoring
> services for our global campus. I would like to use perfSONAR so in
> future we can use data from other networks. Furthermore I claim most
> network admins are not going to try as hard as we did. If it doesn't
> just work they won't use it.
> 
> 
> Warren Matthews, International Research Network Initiatives,
> Georgia Institute of Technology.
> 
> Adventure is a sign of incompetence. If you have an adventure, you're
> doing something wrong. If you really plan things out then you don't have
> adventures - The great polar explorer Vilhjalmur Stefanson.
> 
> 
> 
>