[CI] HELP!!!! GUI designers out there. :)

[Aneesh Kumar K.V]

Hi,

I was wondering why we don't have a GUI installer for SSI cluster. So i
thought i will put some of the requirements that came to my mind. Add
those things that you guys find interesting. May be we can start coding
once the requirements are fully there.

Steps I like will be great for Installing a Linux cluster
(1). I will install a Debian ( I am a debian lover even though i use
redhat for my work :) ) Linux on my machine.
(2) Get the latest kernel releases from kernel.org.
(3) Get the SSI utilites ( which include cluster tools . Dlm daemon
(dlmdu ) and the GUI-cluster build utility from SSI Website AND DHCP
DAEMON ( why I will tell later in step 7 and 8 ). Could be a .deb or
.rpm
(4) Now i run the GUI utility. ( we need to find a good name )
(5) It detect that there is no cluster configured. It will go and
search for a installed Linux kernel source and check for the version
number. If it doesn't find the kernel display a message box saying
kernel source not found and ask the user to install the right version
at the right directory.
(6). If kernel version is found . give a screen that contain a BUILD
button. This should build the kernel image and the initial ramdisk.
that will be put in the master ( we will be running the gui utility in
the master node )
-OR-
(6) If the user doesn't want to build the kernel he can download the
kernel images from SSI website ( But this kernel may not work on most
case. ) Give the path of the kernel image and click the build cluster
button. This should build the the inital ramdisk.

Adding new nodes.

(7)He start the cluster gui. The cluster GUI detect that he is running
in a SSI cluster so he wont give the option of building a cluster. Now
there will be lot of tabbed window most of them for monitoring cluster
events resources etc. A good GUI designer is needed here :)Click on the
tabbed window ADD node. Here he will display all the hardware address
that is there in the DHCP log file. what i found is that most of the
distribution comes with a different log file for DHCP and we cannot
expect that we can get the MAC address from /var/log/messages some of
them doesn't enable logging. We should not ask the user to enable it and
put it in this file . So we make a slight modification to dhcp that
will put all the hardware address to log file that we name . That is
the reason we give a different dhcp server. ( There should be a button
that clear the content of this file. Because if your subnet falls in the
same subnet as the organization then your dhcp server will have the
MAC address of all those machines in the subnet that is sending
messages. )

(8)Now he select the MAC address of the nodes he want to add and then
click Add . this moves the MAC from right text box to the left one .
Once he select all the mac ( yes he can select all the nodes he want to
add at the same time and can build the tftp image at the same time ) he
says ADD nodes. This will creat a new tftp image and he will be
prompted to enter his tftp directory. He puts the tftp image there.


Cluster build over. :)

(9)The utility also need to have different monitoring utility. Node
monitoring, cluster wide top GTOP, cluster wide IPC.

(10)cluster wide node monitoring should have an interface like XPVM.
This comes as a tabbed window once clicked will show me different
computer icons with name which are the name of the node. A right click
on these nodes should show me different options . which includes load,
process list, dlm lock resources etc.

(11) in the process list i right click on a process entry it should list
me option migrate, I would be great if can drag and put the process to a
node . This should also work inside GTOP.

(12) Node configuration tabbed window should list all the configurable
resource. Like the weight for load balancing ( We discussed it in the
last mail regarding CVIP ), configuring CVIP and all the configurable
resource .


Any thing else ... .?

Now the difficult job. Designing the GUI. Any inputs ?

-aneesh

[Brian J. Watson]

Sorry for the delay in responding. A couple of weeks ago, I was in a
rush to finish the draft of the SSI/UML Howto before I went on vacation.

Post by Aneesh Kumar K.V
I was wondering why we don't have a GUI installer for SSI cluster.

Basically, it was because of time constraints. I did most of the work of
writing the installation instructions and developing the netboot tools
to simplify dependent node installation. I would have loved to go on and
implement a user-friendly GUI installer, but with the limited number of
active SSI developers, I really need to work on other things. This seems
like a good project for a new SSI developer to work on, especially one
with GUI design experience.

Post by Aneesh Kumar K.V
(1). I will install a Debian ( I am a debian lover even though i use
redhat for my work :) ) Linux on my machine.

Cool. The SSI installer should support as many as distributions as
possible, limited only by the availibility of developers who work on a
given distribution. I only work and test on Red Hat (more out of comfort
than any deeply held religious beliefs), but I try to be good about
making changes to the Debian and Caldera specific files in Cluster Tools
whenever applicable.

Post by Aneesh Kumar K.V
(2) Get the latest kernel releases from kernel.org.

Nah. There should be binary releases of the SSI and CI kernels. Building
kernels is for developers and bleeding-edge users working from CVS.
Maybe an interim step someone could work on is figuring out how to roll
binary packages for SSI and CI.

Post by Aneesh Kumar K.V
(3) Get the SSI utilites ( which include cluster tools . Dlm daemon
(dlmdu ) and the GUI-cluster build utility from SSI Website AND DHCP
DAEMON ( why I will tell later in step 7 and 8 ). Could be a .deb or
.rpm

This would be nice with the Debian package manager, since it can pull
down all packages that a desired package depends on. It can also
immediately launch the GUI installer (or a faux GUI installer if X is
not running).

Post by Aneesh Kumar K.V
(7)He start the cluster gui. The cluster GUI detect that he is running
in a SSI cluster so he wont give the option of building a cluster. Now
there will be lot of tabbed window most of them for monitoring cluster
events resources etc. A good GUI designer is needed here :)

Ahh... you're describing a GUI cluster manager, rather than just a GUI
installer. That would be nice to have eventually.

Post by Aneesh Kumar K.V
Click on the
tabbed window ADD node. Here he will display all the hardware address
that is there in the DHCP log file. what i found is that most of the
distribution comes with a different log file for DHCP and we cannot
expect that we can get the MAC address from /var/log/messages some of
them doesn't enable logging. We should not ask the user to enable it and
put it in this file .

I admit that I didn't put much thought into this at the time. For those
distributions that have dhcpd logging somewhere other than
/var/log/messages, someone could add a little more intelligence to the
addnode command to deal with this.

Post by Aneesh Kumar K.V
So we make a slight modification to dhcp that
will put all the hardware address to log file that we name . That is
the reason we give a different dhcp server.

We should be careful about modifying as few commands as possible. It
seems better to request that a distribution maintainer turn on logging
in dhcpd, rather than distribute our own slightly modified version of
the command.

Post by Aneesh Kumar K.V
( There should be a button
that clear the content of this file. Because if your subnet falls in the
same subnet as the organization then your dhcp server will have the
MAC address of all those machines in the subnet that is sending
messages. )

The MAC addresses are listed in order of most to least recent.
Regardless of how long the list is, the desired MAC address should be
near the top.

[Aneesh Kumar K.V]

Hi Brian ,


The installer/manager I was discussing is run after a Linux system is
fully installed. That is one install his favorite Linux distribution and
after that he runs this utility cluster_manager. If the cluster manager
finds that it is not running on SSI cluster it should first guide the
user to install one. The method I discussed in my previous mail could
help here. If found to be running on a SSI cluster it just behaves as a
cluster manager.

-aneesh