perfSONAR User Q&A and Other Discussion

[David Mitchell <>]

On Mar 6, 2013, at 6:54 AM, Aaron Brown 
<>
 wrote:
>> 
> 
> With the 3.3 version of the Toolkit, you won't have that issue. In the
> interim, it's probably easiest to just set "restart_services" to 0 in the
> gui_agent_configuration.conf, and then just restart the service manually.
> You can also set "use_toolkit" to 0, and then it'll try writing those
> files directly instead of trying to use the toolkit configuration daemon.

I did that and was able to get the configuration scripts to run. Generally I 
made config files group-writable by perfsonar and made myself a member of 
that group to work round permission issues. I restarted the services by hand. 
I tried to go and view the "Scheduled Tests" in the web interface and that 
now fails with this error:

Scheduled Tests Configuration Tool
Problem reading testing configuration: Problem reading perfSONAR-BUOY 
Configuration
The on-disk configuration has changed. Any changes you made have been lost.

The apache error logs contains a bunch of related information but I'm not 
sure where it's pointing me:
[Wed Mar 06 10:21:11 2013] [error] [client 128.117.65.24] Subroutine 
perfSONAR_PS::NPToolkit::Config::HostsFile::getaddrinfo redefined at 
/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/Exporter.pm line 65., referer: 
https://ps.ncar.xsede.org/toolkit/admin/ntp/
[Wed Mar 06 10:21:11 2013] [error] [client 128.117.65.24]  at 
/opt/perfsonar_ps/toolkit/web/root/admin/regular_testing/../../../../lib/perfSONAR_PS/NPToolkit/Config/HostsFile.pm
 line 27, referer: https://ps.ncar.xsede.org/toolkit/admin/ntp/
[Wed Mar 06 10:21:11 2013] [error] [client 128.117.65.24] Subroutine 
perfSONAR_PS::NPToolkit::Config::HostsFile::AF_INET6 redefined at 
/opt/perfsonar_ps/toolkit/web/root/admin/regular_testing/../../../../lib/perfSONAR_PS/NPToolkit/Config/HostsFile.pm
 line 28, referer: https://ps.ncar.xsede.org/toolkit/admin/ntp/
[Wed Mar 06 10:21:11 2013] [error] [client 128.117.65.24] [Wed Mar  6 
10:21:11 2013] index.cgi: Use of uninitialized value in numeric gt (>) at 
/opt/perfsonar_ps/toolkit/web/root/admin/regular_testing/index.cgi line 129., 
referer: https://ps.ncar.xsede.org/toolkit/admin/ntp/
[Wed Mar 06 10:21:11 2013] [error] [client 128.117.65.24] [Wed Mar  6 
10:21:11 2013] index.cgi: Argument "" isn't numeric in numeric gt (>) at 
/opt/perfsonar_ps/toolkit/web/root/admin/regular_testing/templates/body.tmpl 
line 38., referer: https://ps.ncar.xsede.org/toolkit/admin/ntp/
[Wed Mar 06 10:21:11 2013] [error] [client 128.117.65.24] [Wed Mar  6 
10:21:11 2013] index.cgi: Argument "" isn't numeric in numeric gt (>) at 
/opt/perfsonar_ps/toolkit/web/root/admin/regular_testing/templates/body.tmpl 
line 42., referer: https://ps.ncar.xsede.org/toolkit/admin/ntp/


> 
> Cheers,
> Aaron
> 
>> 
>> -David
>> 
>> On Mar 5, 2013, at 1:09 PM, Aaron Brown 
>> <>
>>  wrote:
>> 
>>> Hey David,
>>> 
>>> Comments inline
>>> 
>>> Cheers,
>>> Aaron
>>> 
>>> On 3/5/13 1:36 PM, "David Mitchell" 
>>> <>
>>>  wrote:
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Feb 28, 2013, at 8:45 AM, Aaron Brown 
>>>> <>
>>>>  wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Hey David,
>>>>> 
>>>>> On 2/27/13 12:50 PM, "David Mitchell" 
>>>>> <>
>>>>>  wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> I'm trying to use the mesh generator to setup a new mesh of bwtcl and
>>>>>> owamp tests. I've been following the directions on the Wiki. I have
>>>>>> created the json configuration file using the build_json script and
>>>>>> updated the agent_configuration.conf to point to the file. That all
>>>>>> seems
>>>>>> to work OK. When I run the generate_configuration script it produces
>>>>>> quite a few errors about being unable to update files. I'm not sure
>>>>>> what
>>>>>> other folks do to run this script, as by default the files are owned
>>>>>> by
>>>>>> user perfsonar and that account is locked.
>>>>> 
>>>>> The default cron jobs run as the perfsonar user, but could conceivably
>>>>> run
>>>>> as root as well, or some other user capable of writing those files and
>>>>> restarting the services. Another option is to run the scripts that
>>>>> write
>>>>> the files as the perfsonar user, and then have a root user restart the
>>>>> services, if you want to lock down what the root user is doing some.
>>>> 
>>>> I'm really just looking for the path of least resistance while I
>>>> troubleshoot the installation. Once it's working I'm fine with the cron
>>>> job.
>>> 
>>> It's probably easiest to run as root while testing.
>>> 
>>>>>> When it completes, there is a maddash configuration dumped in json
>>>>>> format
>>>>>> in /opt/maddash/maddash-webui/xsede-mesh.json. That would be great
>>>>>> but
>>>>>> I
>>>>>> thought maddash was reading /etc/maddash/maddash-server/maddash.yaml
>>>>>> for
>>>>>> it's configuration. I was going to work through this apparent
>>>>>> disconnect
>>>>>> before I try and troubleshoot whether the measurements are being
>>>>>> properly
>>>>>> scheduled. I do have an older version of the maddash software and a
>>>>>> configuration set up. Would that be breaking things? According to yum
>>>>>> I'm
>>>>>> up to date on all of the perfsonar and maddash packages. Thanks in
>>>>>> advance,
>>>>> 
>>>>> I'm not sure why xsede-mesh.json got dumped into that directory. It
>>>>> should
>>>>> write the maddash.yaml file, and in fact, it can't write anything
>>>>> other
>>>>> than that for maddash.
>>>> 
>>>> Wait, that's my own forgetfulness. I plead that I only work on this
>>>> periodically. That's where I stuffed the json file for other agents to
>>>> get. I can't find any place where the generate_configuration script
>>>> even
>>>> tries to write a maddash.yaml file though. It should try to somewhere
>>>> though right? Or am I mistake and the mesh generator just takes care of
>>>> the test setup?
>>> 
>>> The generate_configuration script only takes care of setting up the
>>> tests.
>>> The generate_gui_configuration script (part of the
>>> perl-perfSONAR_PS-MeshConfig-GUI package) writes the maddash.yaml.
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> -David
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>> Aaron
>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> -David Mitchell
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>> | David Mitchell 
>>>>>> ()
>>>>>>        Network Engineer IV  |
>>>>>> | Tel: (303) 497-1845                      National Center for  |
>>>>>> | FAX: (303) 497-1818                      Atmospheric Research |
>>>>>> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> | David Mitchell 
>>>> ()
>>>>        Network Engineer IV  |
>>>> | Tel: (303) 497-1845                      National Center for  |
>>>> | FAX: (303) 497-1818                      Atmospheric Research |
>>>> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>> | David Mitchell 
>> ()
>>        Network Engineer IV  |
>> | Tel: (303) 497-1845                      National Center for  |
>> | FAX: (303) 497-1818                      Atmospheric Research |
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> 
> 
> 

-----------------------------------------------------------------
| David Mitchell 
()
       Network Engineer IV  |
| Tel: (303) 497-1845                      National Center for  |
| FAX: (303) 497-1818                      Atmospheric Research |
-----------------------------------------------------------------