Pat Wilbur

COSI Log

Fall 2006

Welcome! This is my log for the Fall of 2006. I am currently involved in several projects around the lab, namely COSI Project Host and CVS Server, New Theme for COSI Website, PAM Guest Logon with FUSE Project, Access Control Door (Card-Swipe) System, and generic Lab and Server Maintainance including hooking things up.

Project Host and CVS Server:

• This project has been set aside for now, to be merged upstream into the Applied CS Labs TeraStorage Policy project.
• It will resume in the Spring of 2006 when we have power installed for the BladeCenter and storage RAIDs.

New Theme for COSI Website

• Spent several weeks developing a more modern theme for the COSI website, one that is hopefully adaptable for use with the other Applied CS Labs as well
• Got everything working just fine on my webserver (I sacrificed my personal blog from time to time so I could perform extensive development that could not be done on a live version of the website due to the number of necessary modifications)
• Uploaded it to cosi.clarkson.edu and then fixed the few things that broke when attempting to run in the New World
• Got everything working, and contacted current and former COSI members (then again, once a member, always a member) for a RFC on the new design
• Currently working on a new website prototype for both ITL and VR, as well as working on an Applied CS Labs home page
• Made several major and minor updates as per feedback. A few more changes are pending.
• The COSI theme is now available here. I will be making a few changes to fix flukes that were discovered by some users.
• Early this Spring I will have a fully usable and finished theme for ITL, and some elements from the two themes (like the "Applied CS Labs" navigation bar) separated and available for the VR Lab's webmaster to use.
• I have begun designing an "Applied CS Labs" home page to link to the labs.

Access Control Door (Card-Swipe) System:

• Discovered a need for use by WTSC 91.1 FM here on Clarkson University's campus
• Developed a preliminary and working program
• Adding production-grade features
• Adding better group support
• Adding the ability to not only set times certain users/groups can normally access certain resources, but also the ability to temporarily freeze users/groups for a set period of time, and the ability to temporarily grant exceptions to access rules fora set period of time. This is useful for, say, denying access to a group of people for the duration of a vacation break or winter break.
• Will be testing at WTSC in the Spring, after we get our electronic lock fixed to begin with.

Lab & Server Maintenance:

• Came up to Clarkson early to help labs move in, where we moved around and installed furniture and equipment, performed lots of planning, and ran a bit of network cable (not to mention climbing on ladders and doing difficult work a few times
• Got things situated
• Working on finishing a reliable, incremental backup model for cosi.clarkson.edu and other important servers
• Implementing a redundant archive at www/projects/cosi space in case cosi.clarkson.edu vanishes someday along with our backups (and doing so similarly for ITL, VR, and Applied CS)
• Fixing mirror.clarkson.edu
• Fixed bandwidth issues with mirror
• Fixed an issue with attackers using mirror for RDOS attacks on other hosts
• Finishing the transition of mirror to new hardware
• Working with the other "Admins" to hopefully get lab arrangement, networking, power, and servers all hooked up over winter break
• Pulled 4 all-nighters just doing lab-related management things, not homework or personal projects

Xen Workshop:

• Todd Deshane, Jeremy Bongio, and I met with eager freshmen one Saturday to teach them how to install Xen and set up their first Xen system
• A decent number of students involved in the labs attended the workshop and benefitted from it
• ...A good way to get a great turn out to something like a workshop on a Saturday is to say in the e-mail that it is mandatory that all new students attend ;-)