Report on AIAI Experience of Using the CoABS Grid and Related Systems
Austin Tate 24-Jun-2002


Move from CoABS Grid 3.2. to Grid 3.3.0
----------------------------------------

This installation went very easily.  The software on Windows 2000 Pro
and Windows 98SE worked immediately with all of the I-X Process Panel
code.  On Unix, we found that all scripts had the wrong permissions
rwxr--r--.  GITI responded immediately to say this was a problem with
all jar/unjar means of distribution which do not preserve execute
permissions!  Before use on Unix, all relevant scripts have to have
their permissions changes with chmod a+x <filenames>.


Creation of First I-X Grid Extension Release
--------------------------------------------

We have been working on this since November 2001 and treated it as an
opportunity to consider the packaging of our systems and improved
release, installation and visual appearance issues.  From the point of
view of integrating our system with the Grid, the main effort has been
in deciding in which directories in the CoABS Grid Release that the
various release components should be situated.  We were early starters
in looking at this and worked closely with great support and help from
Martha Kahn and Dennis Brake at GITI.  By Christmas we had a test
release which the folks at GITI kindly tried out and confirmed that we
were working along the correct lines. This long but casual period of
preparation and cooperation with GITI meant that we were able to
prepare a Grid Extension Release using a procedure that took less than
half an hour of work to specialise our distribution to the needs of a
Grid Release.

Grid Experience through Firewalls
---------------------------------

Dennis Brake at GITI and Austin Tate tried a number of tests in early
March 2002 between systems at GITI, systems at AIAI and home systems
via the Blueyonder cable modem provider ISP. In all cases we were not
able to establish proper 2 way communications across the Grid. The
GITI 24/7 grid can be seen remotely using the grid locator URL set to
jini://agent1.globalinfotek.com in the Grid Manager configuration
parameters, but the registering agents on a remote network cannot be
seen at the GITI Grid service.  None show in the logs.  The remote end
gets no indication of any errors so would have no way to tell they
were only showing as locally available agents.

I think there is something to be looked at in order to allow the CoABS
Grid to be used through firewalls, and possible problems in remote
linking of grids and lack of feedback about what is running and making
its way through and what is not. I suggest a short note is written on
using the CoABS Grid through firewalls, saying what needs to be
allowed through, and what is used, and how (if this is possible) the
port numbers chosen can be varied in specific circumstances and still
have working with other remote grids be possible.


Adaptation to KAoS (UWF/IHMC)
-----------------------------

In early April 2002, work was done to adapt a working Grid related I-X
setup to work with the new Java Agent Services (JAS) based KAOS.  A
new KAoS release provided by Renia Jeffers was used as a basis.  The
system was working within a few minutes of being set up in a new
environment.  The scripts involved were rather machine dependent
though, and work over the following few weeks was done to simplify the
scripts and to locate in one place changes necessary to adapt them to
a new environment.

A check at the end of April indicated that, in the context of an
alreday working CoABS Grid system with suitable Windows 2000/NT
scripts, it would only take 15 minutes or less to set up KAoS, startup
an example domain, and modify scripts provided to start up a user
agent within a KAoS domain.


Experiment to Provide a CoABS Grid ServiceUI Interface to I-P2 (CoAX JFMC HQ)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Experiment originally planned for late March. With GITI (Dennis Brake
and Martha Kahn).

There was a suggestion by GITI (Martha Kahn) that the CoABS GHrid
Service UI mechanism could be appropriate to provide the I-X Process
Panel interface to its user(s). It was subsequently noted that the
interface is unique to one agent and that it does not make sense for a
single server-style agent providing the process panel support to
provide its interface to many concurrent users. I-X Process Panels are
essentially to support their separate users.

It as concluded that there was nothing to be gained by trying to
provide a single panel running as one agent on the grid that could
provide its interface using the Service UI capabilities to a user in
another location who was just running the Grid Manager interface and
did not have a local copy of an I-X Process Panel for example


Add a New Process Panel to CoAX Demo (Arabello Country HQ)
----------------------------------------------------------

The main evaluation experiment for the use of I-X Process Panels in a
coalition setting was to evaluate the ease or otherwise of giving the
process panel agent software to a new user without any prior exposure
to the systems or their documentation, and to have them tailor the
software to work in their own environment and to tailor a generic
process panel to be a country HQ specific panel for use in the CoAX
demos.

BBN is to act as Arabello during the CoAX Binni 2002 demo.  They were
therefore chosen as the principal evaluator for this experiment.
LM-ATL provided the US HQ agents so they were of assistance in a first
run through of the proposed timed experiment with BBN.  4 other groups
received the release ahead of time to assist in checking the
instructions and the procedures to mount and tailor the software
(QinetiQ, GITI, UTexas and UMichigan).  But in all these 4 cases the
recipients had already seen or use the process panel software, so only
general indications of the times and problems of mounting the software
in a new environment could be gathered.

The timed tests were all carried out without any problems other than
requiring clarifications in documentation or instructions in some
cases. It is possible to mount and test run I-X process panels in a
new environment and by staff who would be knowledgeable about mounting
software (such as a country HQ sys admin team might be) in less than
half an hour - and much of that is to go though a familiarisation test
of messaging between 2 panels.  The tailoring of a process panel to be
country specific takes between 5 and 7 minutes.

The Instructions and I-X system release were provided at
http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/coax/demo/2002/coalition-starter-pack/ix/

The instructions also indicated the points at which timing was requested.

A through C was for tailoring in the new environment...

D through F was for a two panel test and familiarisation exercise.

P to Q was to tailor a panel for use as a new Country HQ panel.

Q to R was to repeat the 2 panel test with the new country HQ panel.

Raw test data:

Austin Tate AIAI 28-May-2002

A: 12:38
B: 12:40
C: 12:45
D: 12:48
E: 12:50
F: 12:57

P: not timed
Q: not timed
R: not timed


Dennis Brake GITI 29-May-2002
A: 13:00
B: 13:02
C: 13:10
D: 13:16
E: 13:18
F: 13:40

P: 13:40
Q: not timed
R: 13:47

Tom Graser UTexas-Austin 12-Jun-2002
A: 16:31
B: 16:34
C: 16:39
D: 16:40
E: 16:43
F: 16:49

Robert Ross UMD 20-Jun-2002
A: 13:50
B: 13:51
C: 14:00
D: 14:02
E: 14:05
F: 14:18

Chris Garrett LM-ATL 31-May-2002 (acting as new country HQ for US)
A: 16:09
B: 16:19
C: 16:32
D: 16:33
E: 16:37
F: 16:47

P: 16:49
Q: not timed
R: 16:56


Brett Benyo BBN 4-Jun-2002 (acting as new country HQ for Arabello)
A: 09:25
B: 09:27
C: 09:31
D: 09:33
E: 09:36
F: 09:41

P: 09:43
Q: 09:46
R: 09:49

optional A: coax.xml is in apps\coax\domain-library not apps\coax\config
optional A: 09:53
optional B: 09:55

kaos setup start: 09:57
installed newest version of KAoS and test: 10:20
ix kaos test complete: 10:27
