Category Archives: CS 401

Week 6 Working Offsite with Screen

This week we reorganized groups. Coady has joined up with Dave and I on the infrastructure team and has connected via ssh as well to help prepare the nodes for the eucalyptus software. It is nice to know that everyone is on the same page as far as our collective understanding of the Eucalyptus design we our trying to construct.

To work on becoming more effective from offsite, Dave suggested I try using a terminal based program called Screen. To connect via SSH to multiple nodes simultaneously and be able to log off and on without losing your work is a huge help improvement in my ability to work offsite on multiple nodes of our matrix cluster. I took a screenshot of the home screen with the introduction. I don’t think every student will need the ability to SSH into the cluster’s nodes so this is really to just an informative post on how to be more efficient on working offsite on multiple servers.

From the blog Mike's Blog. [ CS 401 ] by Michael Iudiciani and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Discussion on proposed Projects

Last week their was a class discussion on which projects the class most wanted to work on. Two projects that i had researched a bit that i though would have been interesting included Mumble or PuTTY, but i figured that these projects might not have been substantial enough for the whole class.

Some of the bigger projects that seemed to be top picks included Eucalyptus, Irrchlicht, Mozilla, Chromium, and OpenOffice. There wasn’t a real certainty of what each person wanted to work on, so we did a class vote to see what the front runners were going to be. The projects that came out ahead included Eucalyptus, Irrchlicht, and Mozilla. After the final shuffling of the votes however the project that had the majority of votes was Eucalyptus.

There was also a class discussion going on at the same time in the IRC Channel, however i was not able to get into the chat because of certain hardware issues i was having with my laptop that day.

From the blog armindoa » WSU CS by mindoftw and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

IRC Chat Excercise

During class we were all introduced into the world of IRC Chat. The exercise that we were given to complete was for you and a partner to edit each other’s profile pages on the Learning Open Source site, but with certain rules attached. In order to complete the assignment we had to only communicate using the IRC channel, talking back and forth in chat.

The whole process was very intriguing because the whole class was silent with chuckles filling the room every once in a while. Although this is wasnt my first time in an IRC Chat environment, it was my first time partaking in an IRC that contained class mates of mine during a class, and talking about the various subject matters going on, such as possible projects to work on.

Over the course of the semester i am sure that the IRC chat will become a very useful tool in communicating with others on the current project we will be working on, and also be a tool that we could use when we have questions, such that we can go on the IRC channel and ask the question we seek an answer to.

From the blog armindoa » WSU CS by mindoftw and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Week 3 Creating the infrastructure

This week we worked on the infrastructure. So far installing the server’s shelves with some classmates along with installing CentOS on all 8 nodes. Sifting through a lot of documentation I learned the basics of how to create a cluster using a GUI as a crutch. However, Dave Thompson will probably show me the true Computer Science way and we will run this cluster on all terminal based machines. The infrastructure is taking longer than I originally planned but we did start from scratch with an empty server rack. Also collaboration with other classmates whose time on campus is very limited to dedicate to this part of the project makes it difficult but not impossible to move forward.

I am excited to get this cluster up, network administration is my real passion and this part of the project is where I will really enjoy working.

From the blog Mike's Blog. [ CS 401 ] by Michael Iudiciani and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

CS401 Picking a Project

Well, I am disappointed that I don’t get to work on irrlicht. That project is one that helped me learn C++ and learn about rendering, so it would have been nice to have the chance to give back to the project a little bit.

I have worries about working on eucalyptus, that we won’t actually get to do any software development, that we may end up just trying to fix broken documentation. All I can do at this point is hope that I’m wrong and try to get something done.

From the blog blabbecs401 » CS401 by blabbecs401 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

CS401 IRC/Wiki

A couple weeks ago what we did in class was use IRC and wiki. Not really sure how much I can say on it, as neither were really new to me. I think IRC is a great way to be able to meet and talk to people that you would otherwise not get the opportunity to do. It’s more immediate than forums which helps to add the possibility of more details in a conversation.

Wiki, of course, is a good tool for documention a project. It’s easy to edit, and it can be opened for anyone to edit, which means that there are less barriers for new sources of information being introduced.

From the blog blabbecs401 » CS401 by blabbecs401 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Week 2

This week we had to read through some articles about the basics of using IRC. Each of us had to write about two possible FOSS projects that we would be interested in contributing to. I recommended that we contribute to two popular projects Libre Office and Mozilla. During class last week we had to work with a partner through IRC only to learn about each other and develop a bio page on each other. This helped us learn how restricting it can be working at separate locations on the same project.

From the blog Mike's Blog. [ CS 401 ] by Michael Iudiciani and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Oh no! I’m defaulting to CLOSED!

My Spring 2012 course is well underway (into the second week), and going well. But, as I was putting up the latest assignments and resources for the class, it struck me: I’m defaulting to CLOSED!

Many of the materials that I’m using are coming from Heidi Ellis‘ course at Western New England University, and from other open, online sources. Yet, here I am, posting them in our Blackboard CMS, where only my students have access to them! And this really is a default action — it’s just what I’m used to doing, so I’ve done it without thinking.

This is a somewhat minor at this point, since Heidi has already made these materials available. But, I’m starting to develop new exercises and assignments that others may want to use. And, just as I borrowed some of the course organization from Heidi’s course, someone else might find my “remix” of her organization useful or inspiring.

So, I’m starting to think about where I want to post my course materials to make them open. (Licensing is not the issue, as I’ve been CC-licensing my course materials for years.) Unfortunately, our school is not good about giving faculty web space that they can easily edit for themselves (our default is Microsoft SharePoint.) But, we have our own departmental server, where we are hosting our departmental blog (acting as a planet), our Git and Subversion servers, and our Wiki. I have a vestigial web site there (that just redirects to my Sharepoint page), so I can probably press that into service as the home for the course.

It may take a bit more work, because it won’t be the default. I’ll have to move all the materials I’ve already posted and remember to post the new ones I’m writing to this more open location.

And, I’ll have to work on making open my new default.

From the blog On becoming an Eccentric Professor... » CS@Worcester by Karl R. Wurst and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Week 1

Goals for this semester:

I really hope to work on a open source project that I can use as part of my resume to show that I am comfortable working in a team environment on a project that spans multiple locations. This should be easily  met considering the version control software, the assignments we will be a working on.

I enjoyed the readings mostly Chapter 3. About the challenges working on projects added to from across the globe. Conflicts on the language the comments should be in was the pretty funny. Linus Torvald wrote his kernel comments in English…even though it was his third language.

From the blog Mike's Blog. [ CS 401 ] by Michael Iudiciani and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

CS401 First Post

 

This is my first post, some of the things that I am looking forward to the work that we are going to get to be doing in this course. Some of the things that i wish to accomplish is to just gain overall experience in working in a larger project, as compared to the smaller programs we have done previously; Another thing is being able to contribute something to the project that we get to work on, that could possibly benefit hundreds or even thousands of people that use that open source software.

From the blog armindoa » WSU CS by mindoftw and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.