[phpwiki]
Working on web applications for the @lab or UABgrid will require some web development skills. You can gain the basics with the material available on the web. Understanding HTML, CSS and how to lay out a page is useful for effective communication.

* An [HTML tutorial|http://www.tizag.com/htmlT/index.php]. Good for the basics and as a reference.
* Some [insight into the process of design|http://www.stopdesign.com/articles/design_process/]. It works much like other creative processes, just different tools and materials.
* An important [overview of the CSS layout model|http://www.brainjar.com/css/positioning/]. You won't be able to control web layout without this one.

[phpwiki]
To support the UABgrid2 pilot we purchased a few Dell systems that arrived in April: two [Dell 2950s| http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/pedge_2950?c=us&cs=RC956904&l=en&s=hied] with dual 3.0Ghz Xeon, 8Gb RAM, and 300Gb SAS disks (Perc5/i-based mirrors), a [Dell 1950|http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/pedge_1950?c=us&cs=RC956904&l=en&s=hied] with dual CPUs and some local storage, and an [Dell/EMC 6TB SAN|http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/pvaul_ax150?c=us&cs=RC956904&l=en&s=hied] to connect to the 1950. The 2950's will host various aspects of the UABgrid2 infrastructure including the identity management (VO, CA, and MyProxy) and application support (GridWay, Gridsphere, and other collaborative apps) systems. The 2950s will be hosting VMware-based virtual machines to carry out most of these tasks, with the goal of easing application deployment when conflicting system requirements arise. The 1950 will act as a quasi-NAS device, supporting traditional network shares locally and high-bandwidth file transfers via GridFTP (and potentially other protocols) for UABgrid job management. Together these systems will form the UABgrid infrastructure cluster.

I've installed cfengine on a few of the desktops just to better get an idea of how it does the configuration management. Prerequisites to the install were Berkeleydb and Openssl. The latest versions of the Berkeleydb aren't configured properly with the cfengine version 2.1.21 that I used, the latest version that is compatible was version 4.0. You will also need to install the db40-devel and openssl-devel tools for build completion.

There also seems to be some incompatibilities with yacc that are only noticed in the make, so in order to get around this you can install both bison and flex to handle the parsing and compiling.

Well I've done the groundwork to get the development environment going using eclipse and drupal. It was a bit of a struggle, but I think I have a handle on it now. I just happen to stumble upon an easier way to get another development environment up and running with much less headache and mess. The secret?? Xampp!! You go to that site and see a groovy chic having fun on the page! She's probably happy because xampp is soooo easy! Basically, you download the xampp package, install it, and start it. That's it! It's simple instructions for anybody from Linux to Windows.

Remember the problem I had here:

Search for the line beginning with APACHE_MODULES, which should look like:

APACHE_MODULES="actions access alias auth ... php4 php5 rewrite"

Well in the galaxy of Linux, planet Ubuntu, a way was found! Since Ubuntu is the spawn of Debian, we must adhere to the Debian way! As root, I had to add a rewrite module so apache could work properly.

Ok, I've been following the instructions given by IBM on the developerworks area in their site. They created those tutorials using Suse and they said that other distributions can work as well; one of them being Ubuntu. Well things seem to go well and I've experienced some slight differences, but I've run into a small problem with the Apache configuration. Their main config file on Suse is found in /etc/sysconfig/apache2 while Ubuntu doesn't have a sysconfig folder. When you download all of the software you need for apache2, it creates it's own apache2 folder so it's path is /etc/apache2. The main config file is apache2.config, but IBM tells you to do this:

[phpwiki]
For those of you who don't know, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act in 2005 that changes the start and end dates for Daylight Saving Time (DST) as of spring 2007. Linux distributions all over have been working on this because other countries have decided to change their daylight savings times as well! Well I've done a little bit of research to get everyone up to speed on this and I've compiled a list with websites to go to so you can update yourselves! I'm still researching so I will be updating this list periodically so check back! Side note: these sites I'm posting will lead you to where you officially need to go if what you need isn't already there!

Well after completing "The Unix Philosophy," I realized just how much power and freedom Unix gives the user! So much power that the user, myself included, doesn't even realize and, as a result, doesn't even see the full potential of it! Peter Parker's uncle, shouts out to Spiderman, said "that with great power comes great responsiblity." Can users be responsible? Can we handle something so small yet so great? Can we open ourselves up to even learn a small piece of it?? After reading this book on unix, I think that we can! Unix has been on the cutting edge since day one, but the world overlooked it because of it's simple complexity!

[phpwiki]
A meeting to discuss the implementation of the 10 Gigabit Ethernet Research Network was held on Friday, February 16, in Rust by the design and implementation group members Tommy Foley (ENG), Puri Bangalore and Fran Fabrizio (CIS), Doug McLean, Phillip Lindley, and John-Paul Robinson (IT).

The 10GigE Research Network (10GigErNET) is a project to facilitate inter-cluster job scheduling between clusters in the CIS and Engineering compute centers and eventually form a high bandwidth pathway between UAB research computing resources and research computing resources at other institutions. It is an important component of the UABgrid grid computing initiative.

cd /etc

Edit the files auto.master, auto.home and auto.groups, so that they contain the content below.

auto.master

#
# $Id: auto.master,v 1.1 2006/06/30 14:51:07 root Exp root $
#
# Sample auto.master file
# This is an automounter map and it has the following format
# key [ -mount-options-separated-by-comma ] location
# For details of the format look at autofs(5).
#/misc  /etc/auto.misc --timeout=60
#/misc  /etc/auto.misc
/net    /etc/auto.net
/groups /etc/auto.groups --t 3600
/home /etc/auto.home --t 3600

auto.home

ibp1          -rw,hard,intr                         metric:/home/ibp1