We had Monday off, which meant no CS401 this week. I spent my free time going over the Eucalyptus wiki. In particular, I studied the Eucalyptus Administrator guide at http://open.eucalyptus.com/wiki/EucalyptusAdministratorGuide_v2.0

This covered much of the terminology, as well as how to install Eucalyptus fro source, and from binary packages. The latter option looks much easier. There are packages for all the major Linux/Unix-base operating systems.

Setting up all the prerequisites to make it run looks like a challenge, as Dave pointed out in class. There are Java and Perl dependencies, as well as specific network configurations that have to be followed. After that, the components must be registered, and the hypervisor must be configured.

When all this is done, it is recommended that you run some test VM’s before loading your own images.

This has been a fantastic education in cloud computing, as well as virtual machines. I set up Virtual box and loaded an Ubuntu ISO to get the feel for VM image files. I am looking forward to seeing the first VM running on the cluster

I look forward to seeing a

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This week in class we installed, configured, and operated the git version control system. A version control system is an extremely useful tool on a software development project. It ensures that two or more people do no modify the same file at the same time. If this does happen, the software presents a conflict which can then be resolved.

Many prior versions can be backed up. It is easy to return to a previous version. The git commands are English friendly, and are similar to other console commands.

We downloaded a pair of security keys that git uses to authenticate users of a repository. We configured git to identify us with our name and email. We cloned an existing repository that Professor Wurst had set up for us. We then practiced editing files, checking status, and committing the files to the repository.

This was a good experience for me. The command line interface seems to make file transfer much faster. A great, unique feature of git is its branching model. Git will allow you to have multiple local branches that can be entirely independent of each other.

Once you have a Git repository, either one that you set up on your own server, or one hosted someplace, you can tell Git to either push any data that you have that is not in the remote repository up, or you can ask Git to fetch differences down from the other repo.

From the reading I have done, it appears that git is a superior VCS over others like Subversion, CVS, or Mercurial.

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1/6/12
Today in class we were asked to choose an Open Source project that we will work on as a group this semester.

We were each assigned to research 2 projects last week and document it. It was an eye-opening experience. I especially liked the Democratic nature in which people are elected to be committers (At least on the projects I researched), and the way you have to work your way up.
I chose a FOSS music project, and an Appache Java project.

Alas, my choices were not Professor Wurst’s favorites, and did not make it onto the illustrious Whiteboard. What was, though, along with some other popular choices, was a project called Eucalyptus (http://open.eucalyptus.com/)
This is a project run by a colleague of Prof. Wurst’s.

From their website: “Eucalyptus enables the creation of on-premise private clouds”. This is the project we will ultimately run with. It seems to have great opportunities to learn more about networking, operating systems, and coding. I am looking forward to digging into this.

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1/31/12Today Professor Wurst showed us how to use IRC(Internet Relay Chat). I chose to install Chatzilla add-on for Firefox to access the IRC. We connected to the Teaching Open Source Planet at ircs://freenode/teachingopensource .

I liked using the different commands, and learning how to send private messages. It seems like a valuable tool for getting a lot of people together on the same subject- such as working on a FOSS project.

I have to admit though, that it was a bit overwhelming at first. With the whole class on the channel, along with others, the text was literally flying by. It was hard to keep up. Chatzilla does allow you to scroll, without your scrolled portion continually falling behind, so I could go back and reread what people were saying. It was also cool talking to people from a large FOSS project.

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Hello all,

This is my first post. My goals for this course are many. I would like to learn to program for the web. Networking and Internet communication have always interested me. Hopefully I can get involved in a project that will allow me to develop skills in this area (in which, I’m afraid, my experience is limited).

If I can help to build a meaningful module, or project, that would actually work across a network, or between remote computers, that would be exciting to me! I would like to learn on-line collaboration; even a new language.

The on line text on Open Source, so far, is interesting. I particularly like the fact that joining open source projects gives you exposure, as a student, to collaboration tools and source code that you would never otherwise have access to. It appears to give good training, without the pressure.

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