All Past Services

Name	Resources	Status	Description
Talos	https://talos.cslabs.clarkson.edu/	Bequeathed to dunbarj.	Talos is the Central Authentication server, which has humbly maintained its services for about two years: the dc=cslabs,dc=clarkson,dc=edu LDAP root, containing the directory information for all our users; the CSLABS.CLARKSON.EDU MIT Kerberos realm; DHCP for 128.153.144.0/24; and DNS for the cslabs.clarkson.edu and cosi.clarkson.edu zones, and all reverse mappings.
Metapod	http://bacon.cslabs.clarkson.edu/	Bequeathed to newmanre after transitioning to Debian from FreeBSD and being renamed to Bacon.	Metapod was the NFS server for all machines in the CSLABS.CLARKSON.EDU realm; it was the primary reason for the existence of the Kerberos realm. It incidentally also served the website at http://cslabs.clarkson.edu/, and now http://cosi.clarkson.edu/ as well.
Bouncer	bouncer.cslabs.clarkson.edu	Bequeathed to bashawhm.	Bouncer is an IRC bouncer—designed to forward and maintain connections on behalf of clients—but also was the first model for the lab build. It is set up such that, by default, all SSH sessions are attached to an "ssh" tmux session, which makes its use highly convenient during network disruptions.
Fsuvius	http://fsuvius.cslabs.clarkson.edu/	Given to the lab, for the impending rewrite by quanthd.	Fsuvius is the web service which succeeded print as my second web service; its job was to replace the whiteboard as the source of information tracking for the Soda Fund. Like the whiteboard, there is no authentication (except for verifying source IP addresses), and the interface is extremely simple. Unlike the whiteboard, names can be styled arbitrarily, and the service remembers all changes to the database. While its design is now dated and easily criticized, it was the first dynamic real-time-updating web app I wrote (and that was written by the labs for the labs), and went on to inspire Talks, Meeting Minutes, Place, and probably a few others. Initially on its own Debian VM at 128.153.145.177, Fsuvius both necessitated and was eventually moved to Dubsdot (which I claim to have given the name).
COSI Place	http://place.cslabs.clarkson.edu/	Given to the lab in general, source may be found here	COSI Place is a reincarnation of Reddit's r/place, a 1000x1000 pixel canvas with 16 colors that allowed any user to place a single pixel once every 5 (or 10, or 20) minutes. COSI Place is much more forgiving--it lacks any authentication, and, as such, lacks delays--even having only 500x500 pixels--but it is nonetheless a fun, multiplay, real-time canvas for freely sketching upon and enjoying. The code was written strictly as a proof-of-concept, but it has since incorporated a proof-of-work scheme, real websocket support (for the first time in a Dubsdot service), and various other experiments.
Pluto	http://pluto.cslabs.clarkson.edu	Given to the interested parties after its use in Turtle Talk	Pluto is "a webhook hacking server"; more and more webservices (and other services) have begun communicating important events by sending HTTP requests in various places (our Gitlab instance included), so Pluto was meant to simplify the process of receiving those HTTP requests and acting upon them. Initially built for the developmental Sol branch on our Gitlab (and set up to post an issue whenever the tests failed), Pluto since saw even more development when it was used as a backend for Turtle Talk, a Hackathon project in which Alexa was given a skill to drive around one of our turtlebots. The project is another Python Flask app, mostly of my conception, but with significant contribution and direction from lannonbr. At present, it lacks authentication, and can drop to a (user) shell, which is something I encourage the next developer(s) to address.
Recursion	recursion.cslabs.clarkson.edu	???	Recursion was a proof-of-concept of using a DNS delegation to allow a record with arbitrarily many components to resolve to a CNAME of a record with one less component; arbitrarily, the toplevel recursion.cslabs.clarkson.edu is an A record referring to the same host as Dubsdot, which hosts a static site that states the hostname, and, after some time, redirects to the same hostname with "recursion." prepended. Dig reveals that each record posted this way indeed has a CNAME chain resolving all the way down to the single level, and the service is an excellent way to see how well "huge" DNS packets are allowed to transit (Talos itself permits ~18-22 levels of recursion, but some ISPs and firewalls can choke on as little as 4). The nameserver for recursion isn't actually on Talos (bind doesn't support this silliness); it's a custom Python script running on Bacon, to which Talos delegates.
Grm	http://grm.cslabs.clarkson.edu/	Left without a maintainer.	Grm is my MP* page for Spring 2016 (because Jeanna was slow to create my directory); it is a service on Dubsdot. While harmless, it has a "feature" that it attempts to locate ITL Chorus clients every 5 seconds, which can be annoying when reviewing packet captures of the network (though probably not as annoying as the normal ARP storm). For this reason, it has been inactive on-and-off for some time.
Phoenix	phoenix.cslabs.clarkson.edu	Permanently retired.	Phoenix was a VM host built by beadleha and cashinpj with my help in enrolling in Central Authentication (Talos). Made from otherwise abandoned parts ("from the ashes"), it served venerably and stably for about a year before again bursting into flames and beginning the Hydra crisis. While it is certainly no longer in one piece anymore, fragments of its existence may yet be found throughout the lab hardware to this day.
Bennu	bennu.cslabs.clarkson.edu	Given to pederskz.	Bennu was a VM host built by beadleha and cashinpj as the "software configuration twin" of Phoenix--and indeed proved very useful in supporting Phoenix's VMs when it finally failed. While remarkably stable, its hardware became rather dated, and it was generally incapable of supporting any VM which had a non-trivial requirement of CPU time (though it was, for some time, the comfortable, stbale home of IO-bound VMs such as Bouncer). Eventually, with the integration of Grand Dad, Bennu was finally retired, and replaced into service as a temporary file server for ITL imaging.
FRUX	frux.cslabs.clarkson.edu	Released to beadleha.	FRUX was a VM which hosted a website and bug tracker concerning "FRUX" ("Free CRUX"--where CRUX is the direct ancestor of Arch Linux), a hobby project of beadleha's to generate an FSF-approvable GNU/Linux distribution. Briefly located at 128.153.145.123 ("as easy as 123"), it was eventually retired when beadleha graduated.
Eldwyn	eldwyn.cslabs.clarkson.edu, eldwyn.nexusg.org	Reclaimed.	Eldwyn was a briefly-lived game server owned jointly by myself and my high-school friends which ran a few Source servers and a Minecraft server. It was eventually evicted in the Summer of 2015 in order to avoid branding the CS Labs as a "gaming club". The name was given by Jack Dacey, a short-lasting lab director to which Alex Hurd handed off (before being separated from the university).
Print	http://print.cslabs.clarkson.edu/	To be determined.	Print was the first service I administered, given to me by vaillap; the original service was written in idiomatic PHP, with which I was unfamiliar, so I learned the Flask Python framework and redesigned it from the ground up. Within about a week, it could print documents and supported most of the features of the previous incarnation; it has since come to support more. The old PHP application may have been lost to time, unfortunately. The table-and-iframe HTML4 design was typical of my aesthetic, and the colorscheme was chosen to represent Clarkson's green-and-gold school colors. While the quota system was eventually done away with, the codebase continues to have legacy support for it. Aside from minor feature additions, the entire codebase has not changed significantly for three years, despite migrating to Dubsdot when it was created.

Name

Resources

Status

Description

Talos

https://talos.cslabs.clarkson.edu/

Bequeathed to dunbarj.

Talos is the Central Authentication server, which has humbly maintained its services for about two years: the dc=cslabs,dc=clarkson,dc=edu LDAP root, containing the directory information for all our users; the CSLABS.CLARKSON.EDU MIT Kerberos realm; DHCP for 128.153.144.0/24; and DNS for the cslabs.clarkson.edu and cosi.clarkson.edu zones, and all reverse mappings.

Metapod

http://bacon.cslabs.clarkson.edu/

Bequeathed to newmanre after transitioning to Debian from FreeBSD and being renamed to Bacon.

Metapod was the NFS server for all machines in the CSLABS.CLARKSON.EDU realm; it was the primary reason for the existence of the Kerberos realm. It incidentally also served the website at http://cslabs.clarkson.edu/, and now http://cosi.clarkson.edu/ as well.

Bouncer

bouncer.cslabs.clarkson.edu

Bequeathed to bashawhm.

Bouncer is an IRC bouncer—designed to forward and maintain connections on behalf of clients—but also was the first model for the lab build. It is set up such that, by default, all SSH sessions are attached to an "ssh" tmux session, which makes its use highly convenient during network disruptions.

Fsuvius

http://fsuvius.cslabs.clarkson.edu/

Given to the lab, for the impending rewrite by quanthd.

Fsuvius is the web service which succeeded print as my second web service; its job was to replace the whiteboard as the source of information tracking for the Soda Fund. Like the whiteboard, there is no authentication (except for verifying source IP addresses), and the interface is extremely simple. Unlike the whiteboard, names can be styled arbitrarily, and the service remembers all changes to the database. While its design is now dated and easily criticized, it was the first dynamic real-time-updating web app I wrote (and that was written by the labs for the labs), and went on to inspire Talks, Meeting Minutes, Place, and probably a few others. Initially on its own Debian VM at 128.153.145.177, Fsuvius both necessitated and was eventually moved to Dubsdot (which I claim to have given the name).

COSI Place

http://place.cslabs.clarkson.edu/

Given to the lab in general, source may be found here

COSI Place is a reincarnation of Reddit's r/place, a 1000x1000 pixel canvas with 16 colors that allowed any user to place a single pixel once every 5 (or 10, or 20) minutes. COSI Place is much more forgiving--it lacks any authentication, and, as such, lacks delays--even having only 500x500 pixels--but it is nonetheless a fun, multiplay, real-time canvas for freely sketching upon and enjoying. The code was written strictly as a proof-of-concept, but it has since incorporated a proof-of-work scheme, real websocket support (for the first time in a Dubsdot service), and various other experiments.

Pluto

http://pluto.cslabs.clarkson.edu

Given to the interested parties after its use in Turtle Talk

Pluto is "a webhook hacking server"; more and more webservices (and other services) have begun communicating important events by sending HTTP requests in various places (our Gitlab instance included), so Pluto was meant to simplify the process of receiving those HTTP requests and acting upon them. Initially built for the developmental Sol branch on our Gitlab (and set up to post an issue whenever the tests failed), Pluto since saw even more development when it was used as a backend for Turtle Talk, a Hackathon project in which Alexa was given a skill to drive around one of our turtlebots. The project is another Python Flask app, mostly of my conception, but with significant contribution and direction from lannonbr. At present, it lacks authentication, and can drop to a (user) shell, which is something I encourage the next developer(s) to address.

Recursion

recursion.cslabs.clarkson.edu

???

Recursion was a proof-of-concept of using a DNS delegation to allow a record with arbitrarily many components to resolve to a CNAME of a record with one less component; arbitrarily, the toplevel recursion.cslabs.clarkson.edu is an A record referring to the same host as Dubsdot, which hosts a static site that states the hostname, and, after some time, redirects to the same hostname with "recursion." prepended. Dig reveals that each record posted this way indeed has a CNAME chain resolving all the way down to the single level, and the service is an excellent way to see how well "huge" DNS packets are allowed to transit (Talos itself permits ~18-22 levels of recursion, but some ISPs and firewalls can choke on as little as 4). The nameserver for recursion isn't actually on Talos (bind doesn't support this silliness); it's a custom Python script running on Bacon, to which Talos delegates.

Grm

http://grm.cslabs.clarkson.edu/

Left without a maintainer.

Grm is my MP* page for Spring 2016 (because Jeanna was slow to create my directory); it is a service on Dubsdot. While harmless, it has a "feature" that it attempts to locate ITL Chorus clients every 5 seconds, which can be annoying when reviewing packet captures of the network (though probably not as annoying as the normal ARP storm). For this reason, it has been inactive on-and-off for some time.

Phoenix

phoenix.cslabs.clarkson.edu

Permanently retired.

Phoenix was a VM host built by beadleha and cashinpj with my help in enrolling in Central Authentication (Talos). Made from otherwise abandoned parts ("from the ashes"), it served venerably and stably for about a year before again bursting into flames and beginning the Hydra crisis. While it is certainly no longer in one piece anymore, fragments of its existence may yet be found throughout the lab hardware to this day.

Bennu

bennu.cslabs.clarkson.edu

Given to pederskz.

Bennu was a VM host built by beadleha and cashinpj as the "software configuration twin" of Phoenix--and indeed proved very useful in supporting Phoenix's VMs when it finally failed. While remarkably stable, its hardware became rather dated, and it was generally incapable of supporting any VM which had a non-trivial requirement of CPU time (though it was, for some time, the comfortable, stbale home of IO-bound VMs such as Bouncer). Eventually, with the integration of Grand Dad, Bennu was finally retired, and replaced into service as a temporary file server for ITL imaging.

FRUX

frux.cslabs.clarkson.edu

Released to beadleha.

FRUX was a VM which hosted a website and bug tracker concerning "FRUX" ("Free CRUX"--where CRUX is the direct ancestor of Arch Linux), a hobby project of beadleha's to generate an FSF-approvable GNU/Linux distribution. Briefly located at 128.153.145.123 ("as easy as 123"), it was eventually retired when beadleha graduated.

Eldwyn

eldwyn.cslabs.clarkson.edu, eldwyn.nexusg.org

Reclaimed.

Eldwyn was a briefly-lived game server owned jointly by myself and my high-school friends which ran a few Source servers and a Minecraft server. It was eventually evicted in the Summer of 2015 in order to avoid branding the CS Labs as a "gaming club". The name was given by Jack Dacey, a short-lasting lab director to which Alex Hurd handed off (before being separated from the university).

http://print.cslabs.clarkson.edu/

To be determined.

Print was the first service I administered, given to me by vaillap; the original service was written in idiomatic PHP, with which I was unfamiliar, so I learned the Flask Python framework and redesigned it from the ground up. Within about a week, it could print documents and supported most of the features of the previous incarnation; it has since come to support more. The old PHP application may have been lost to time, unfortunately. The table-and-iframe HTML4 design was typical of my aesthetic, and the colorscheme was chosen to represent Clarkson's green-and-gold school colors. While the quota system was eventually done away with, the codebase continues to have legacy support for it. Aside from minor feature additions, the entire codebase has not changed significantly for three years, despite migrating to Dubsdot when it was created.