The psconfig user interface only ever needs to talk to UNIS, so it could conceivable live anywhere.  It just needs the slice name and the user cert/key to run.

My main concern is allowing the active configuration interface to be reachable without a separate login process (i.e. user/password or user cert in browser).  How does your Desktop login to the Drupal instance running on the GN, for instance, and display things in the HTML5 window?

The point is that if the Desktop is going to be how experimenters primarily use GEMINI, the active measurement config page should be either integrated into the Desktop or at the very least accessible via the same login mechanism.  My thought was that if the psconfig interface ran on the same web server as the Desktop, it could share the login session state and the slice info and user cert/key that's already available.  If we can somehow share login state from the Desktop to the psconfig GUI, then the GUI could still run on the GN.

- ezra


On 4/30/2013 12:39 PM, James Griffioen wrote:
>
> Ezra,
>
> We will need to think about the seemless login/access a bit, but I am
> sure we can come up with something.
>
> It is not clear why you want to move psconfig out of the GN.  In
> general, we try to put things on the GN because it solves a lot of
> problems -- in particular, the GN can communicate with the experimental
> nodes, whereas the user's browser may only be able to communicate with
> the GN, not the experimental nodes.
>
> Note, we do not really run much of anything on the GENI Desktop server.
>   It primarily serves up code that runs in the browser.  So when you say
> "move it out of the GN and run alongside the GENI Desktop" I assume you
> are thinking you will re-implmement all of psconfig in html5/javascript.
>   That sounds like it would be hard, a lot of work, and would possibly
> create problems accessing experimental nodes.  You would probably be
> better implementing parts of the *use interface* in html5 and keep the
> other parts on the GN.
>
> Jim
>
> On 04/30/2013 11:06 AM, Ezra Kissel wrote:
>> I wanted to write down a few notes about getting the active measurement
>> page (BLiPP/psconfig) out of the GN and running alongside the GENI
>> Desktop for better integration.
>>
>> The prerequisite is to complete the active configuration for BLiPP so we
>> can remove the original LAMP parts.  This work is ongoing and we plan to
>> demonstrate additional functionality by 5/14.
>>
>> To run the active configuration pages, we need the following:
>>
>> 1) Access to the slice name and the user cert and key.  On the GN, this
>> information is present on the filesystem.  On the GENI Desktop web
>> server, how can we get this information for the given user?
>>
>> 2) The psconfig code will need to be integrated with the login session
>> that the GENI Desktop uses to provide seamless navigation between pages.
>>   Are there any PHP snippets or similar available so that we can see how
>> this is done currently?
>>
>> 3) The psconfig javascript implementation (Dojo-based) calls out to an
>> external python script to query UNIS.  We would need the web server to
>> provide the same functionality.
>>
>> I think that covers the main points.  We basically need to modify the
>> psconfig scripts to use a per-session, per-login approach given the user
>> and slice information available from the GENI Desktop.  Other than that,
>> the functionality should remain the same.
>>
>> Let me know if there any questions regarding this task.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> - ezra