Ioan Raicu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> schrieb am 11/13/2007 03:53:55 AM:

> Jan,
> Falkon runs in user space (not system administrator space).  The 
> pre-requisites to compile Falkon are Java 1.4 and ANT, and to run Falkon 

> are Java 1.4.  The rest of the needed software is all bundled in the 
> Falkon SVN repository.  The rest of the software stack is: 1) GT4 Java 
> WS-Core container, 2) ploticus (for graphs), 3) 500 line web server (to 
> view graphs remotely), and 4) the various pieces of the Falkon framework 

> (service code, worker code, command line client, GUI monitor).  So, 
> basically, the end user just needs Java and ANT, which are both 
> downloadable and installable in a matter of 10~20 min. 

Ioan,

> I am not sure how clean (or up-to-date) the installation instructions 
> are,

"(There is currently no text in this page)"... Now that you posted the 
good stuff here, please put it in the Wiki for a good start! Better yet 
would be a step-by-step tutorial for a potential user, still better a 
screencast (although it may be an overkill if the installation is simple). 
Indeed, you may need several tutorials for different user groups.

> but basically I (as the main developer of Falkon) can get the 
> entire software stack from SVN in 6.10 minutes (from a LAN connected 
> machine),  compile in 1.01 min, configure things to suit the environment 

> in a a matter of minutes (2 configuration files control everything), and 

> be up and running on the order of O(10 min).   If you need to get Java 
> and ANT as well, make it O(30 min).  If you want to use security and 
> need to setup your security credentials (which you would have to as well 

> for other services such as GRAM4), then that could further add to the 
> time it takes to get up and running, but that is out of my control.

Do I have to deploy new WSRF services into an existing Globus container or 
is Falkon just an out-of-process client? Service deployment cannot be done 
by end-users (as opposed to site administrators). Same thing with 
installing processes on a cluster head node. You should make it clear in 
your installation guide whether and at which point administrator 
privileges are necessary. I did not quite understand what you mean by that 
it runs in "user space" - "not a kernel thread", "not running under root 
uid", "no root necessary to set up", "running under uid of a cluster 
end-user" or some combination of these?

> The biggest challenge for new applications that want to use Falkon will 
> be to either wrap the existing command line client, or to change the 
> command line client to suit their needs.  However, if an application 
> already has support for GRAM, the transition to Falkon should be 
> relatively straight forward as the semantics are similar (define job 
> description, submit, wait for notification of completion).
> 
> I hope its clear that the middleware at a grid site does not need to 
> change at the site level.

It is certainly not apparent from your web site. In fact, the impression I 
got from reading the SC07 presentation was that it's a real boon for 
Swift/Karajan users, which invokes thoughts like "ok, so where do I 
start... by reading Swift/Karajan documentation, what fun...". 
Fortunately, this no longer seems to be true.

> Falkon will be a user level process that runs 
> on behalf of the user who configured and started it, will allocate 
> resources via GRAM4, dispatch tasks via WS calls directly to compute 
> resources (out of band of GRAM), etc.  Once its configured at a site 
> with the GRAM4 server location, number of resources needed (upper and 
> lower bounds), the time resources are needed for, etc, starting and 
> stopping Falkon is a 1 command invocation.  Once started, Falkon will 
> monitor the Falkon queue, and increase the number of resources when the 
> queue grows, and shrink the number of resources when the queue is empty 
> (all within the bounds specified in the configuration of Falkon).

Please post this information on your site, too.

> If you happen to try Falkon out, I'd be happy to hear back feedback 
> about how easy it was to setup to run some simple sleep jobs, and even 
> more how easy/difficult it was to use the client API to integrate into 
> your existing application!

You have certainly piqued my interest. I will get back to you when I try 
it (December).

Regards,
Jan Ploski

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