Welcome to the Flack tutorial!

Preparation

If you aren't familiar with GENI terms, like what an authority is, check out the short explanation of various terms used.

Follow the directions for becoming a GENI user and logging in to Flack.

At this point you should start to see resources being added to the map in Flack.

Creating a Blank Slice

Once all of the calls have finished after you login, you will be ready to create a slice. Enter a name for your new slice in the top text box in the pane to the right of the map and hit enter. When you see a blank canvas appear that means you are ready to put resources into your slice.

Choosing and Configuring Resources

To the left of the slice window you will see a list of managers which have resources you can reserve. Choose a manager, utahemulab.cm for example, and drag an unbound exclusive node () onto the canvas. You've just stagged a PC to add to your slice! Drag another one from the same manager onto the canvas. Click and drag the plus sign from one node to the other. You've just created a link between the two nodes! Easy right?

Allocating Resources

Click 'Create' at the bottom left and wait for everything to turn green. This will take anywhere from a minute to a few minutes so feel free to explore the console ( top left of flack) while you're waiting. The console lists all of the XML-RPC and HTTP calls, both requests and responses, made in Flack. If you eventually see green that means the experiment was created and booted successfully.

Releasing Resources

Since you probably don't need the resources now, why not let someone else use them? To release all resources which were allocated to the slice, click the delete button () which is located next to the Create button. When the resources are released you will see them removed from the canvas.

Your slice is still available so feel free to explore at this point and perhaps try creating a different topology.

Learn More

For learning more about how to use Flack, see the manual.