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Distributed Systems Lab 2003


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Working Mode


One of the major changes in this year's lab compared to previous labs (e.g., RNUE 2001) is that we switched from group work to a single person mode. Thus you will not work in a group with other students but on your own. You alone are responsible for implementing the lab examples and submitting your solution!

You can choose among two primary working modes: at home (i.e., using your own computer and software we provide at the Web site or on the lab CD) or in the lab. Of course, you can also work in both environments if you like. An important requirement is that your submissions work in the lab environment because we test them using these settings. On the other hand, we strongly encourage you to develop the lab examples at home to avoid a overly crowded lab.

If you have troubles setting up the environment at home or in the lab, please follow the same steps for solving problems as listed in the "How to get help" section , i.e., ask collegues, use the newsgroup (at.tuwien.infosys.rnue), contact tutors, get an appointment with an assistant.

The lab Web server is available at http://www.dslab.tuwien.ac.at/ .

Working in the Lab

Everything is set up for you in the lab. The necessary packages are installed and the project structure is available in your home directories. You can start right away implementing the lab examples. More information about the lab environment is provided in the lab environment section .

Working@Home with Internet access (online)

If you have permanent Internet access such as provided by Chello, you can remotely work in the lab environment. We provide remote access to your account in the DSLAB using secure shell (SSH) version 2. If you do not have SSH2 installed on your system, the download section provides links to free implementations.

You can log into all servers and workstations in the lab domain ( dslab.tuwien.ac.at ), i.e., labsrv01, labsrv02, labpc01 - labpc19. Check the machine environment section for details when the machines are available.

Forwarding of your X session is only supported via SSH tunneling (for security reasons). If you do not know what this means, please check one of the many tutorials and explanations on the Web or ask a collegue.

Working@Home without Internet access (offline)

If you want to develop at home without being online all the time, you have to follow the steps described in this section. We fully support offline working at home and provide downloads and installation instructions for all required packages. This should make it easy to set up your system for the distributed systems lab and let you start working.

System Requirements

If you want to work offline, your system must have the following packages installed:

Lab Downloads

In addition to the system requirements mentioned above, you need a couple of lab-related downloads. The following list gives a short description of the downloads; more detailed information is found in the download section .

  • The lab package (mandatory) : the lab package contains the project structure and all files and libraries you need in order to implement the lab. A detailed description of the lab package and the project structure is given in the introduction to the lab examples .
  • The offline version of the Web site (mandatory) : includes all non-dynamic sections of the Web site including the task descriptions and the API documentation of the ShareMe library.
  • Additional tutorials and APIs (optional) : We provide a set of additional tutorials and APIs for download; these are slightly modified in their structure compared to their original versions to seamlessly integrate with the offline version of the Web site (i.e., make all links work in the Web site).

Hint: Instead of downloading all the software from the lab Web server, you can buy the Lab 2003 CD for EUR 2.0 at the end of the preparation meeting (see Time Table).

Installing the lab package at home

Once you downloaded all the packages, create a project directory as base directory for your development. Copy all downloads into this directory and unpack the files in the project directory. In a Linux environment, the command line could look like shown below:

            
tar xvfz dslab2003.tar.gz
          

If you are working under Windows, do not use WinZip or similar tools because they do not extract empty directories automatically. Rather use a Windows version of the Unix tar and gzip tools also available in the download section . If you use these tools, you have to use them as shown below:

            
gzip -d dslab2003.tar.gz
tar xvf dslab2003.tar
          

When you have unpacked all downloads and installed the mandatory tools (JDK, Jakarta Ant), the only remaining task is to adapt the build.xml file and you are done. If you do not use the provided build.xml file, you also have to set some environment variables such as the PATH and the CLASSPATH to reflect your settings. If you do so, we strongly recommend to use a script to set all environment variables; an example of how this could look like is given in the Linux tutorial . Further important information on the project structure and the property file used for the ShareMe system is given in the introduction to the lab examples section.

Since you probably do not have a networked environment at home, we simulate it by running several instances of the ShareMe system (and the certification authority) on a single computer. Thus you have to use several property files specifying different settings for these instances.

The section detailing on the certification authority also explains how you can use the DSG CA at home.

Important! Independently of where you develop your solutions, it will always be tested in the lab environment. Thus make sure that your implementations work in the lab environment before submitting them!

Important! If you work at home it is your responsability to regularely make backups! We cannot accept any excuses for late submissions based on hardware defects of your machine. A good solution is to periodically copy all your files to your lab account!



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