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Rspectutorial

RSpec Tutorial

RSpec Tutorial

This tutorial explains the basic concepts used in RSpec and how to accomplish certain common tasks.

Key features of the ProtoGENI RSpec

  • Identifying resources
    • All nodes and links are identified by URN
  • Nodes
    • Node have types
    • Geographic information can be attached
    • Virtualization technology is included as a field
    • Descriptions of additional optional facilities provided by the component manager (e.g. login protocols, installation of software, commands to run) can be supplied
  • Links
    • Links are point-to-point: LANs and other "full connectivity" environments (such at the Internet), a "LAN node" is created, and all members are linked to it.
    • Links have bandwidth, a type, etc.
    • Links endpoints reference Interfaces on Nodes
    • Links have LinkTypes which describe how experimental traffic is to be encapsulated and what layer(s) are supported for that traffic.
  • Interfaces
    • Endpoint of a link
    • Named by node, plus an opaque interface name
    • In progress: Interfaces will be first-class entities, declared as part of the component they belong to
  • Metadata
    • A "valid until" field
    • A "generated" time
  • ExternalReferences
    • A mechanism by which CMs can describe how their components connect with the components in other CMs.
  • Wireless Nodes
    • We need to make special provision for nodes which can communicate wirelessly: WirelessRSpec
  • Extensions (see RSpecExtensions)
    • The RSpec must provide an extensions mechanism to accommodate the wide range of stakeholders which will make use of the RSpec.

How do I use RSpecs?

RSpecs interact with nearly every piece of the GENI architecture. This forms a kind of lifecycle as different kinds of RSpecs are created and modified by different ProtoGENI entities.

The RSpec returned in DiscoverResources is an advertisement which describes the available resources. You must then craft a request specifying which resources you want. There are a number of RSpecExample examples of requests which you can use as a starting point. Finally, when you have created your sliver, you will receive a manifest which gives you additional information about which resources were selected.

How do I create a request?

How do I install tarballs and setup my node?

When constructing your request, you can specify a tarball to install by adding a 'tarfiles' attribute to your node:

<node ...
      tarfiles="/first/path http://example.com/first/file.tar.gz;/second/path http://example.com/second/file.tar.gz" >
  ...
</node>

The attribute is a semicolon-delimited list of pairs. Each element in the list contains an install path and a URL pointing to the tarfile separated by a space. The urls will be fetched and the tarfiles will be uncompressed into the specified install directories before any startup commands are executed.

If you want to run a command on startup to set up your node properly, you can add a 'startup_command' attribute to your node:

<node ...
      startup_command="/path/to/startup/script args"
  ...
</node>

The startup_command is a shell command which will be executed on startup after any tarballs have been installed.

There is a complete example of a request using both of these features.