perfSONAR User Q&A and Other Discussion

[Warren Matthews <>]

Precisely. Thanks Chris for articulating it so well.

On Fri, 2006-08-18 at 09:37 +0200, Chris Welti wrote:
> 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.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
>