Originally (prior to June 2018), the gathering of data from the MAs was initiated by the SLAC end.
Since we could not initiate the gathering from the SLAC end, we chose to use the anonymous ftp service at SLAC (see https://www.slac.stanford.edu/comp/unix/ftp.html).
1. In this case, the MA (e.g. a script initiated at the Beijing MA and run at Beijing by say user Ann who does not have an account at SLAC) daily runs a script (as a cronjob) to use the incoming anonymous FTP at SLAC to store the day's data at SLAC. An example of an FTP session to copy a file is seen at the Proxy FTP script document.
At most MAs (with the exception of SLAC), the data is stored in /usr/local/share/pinger/data, e.g.
file: /usr/local/share/pinger/data found on dxmon3.cern.ch total 66756 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 12244303 Jun 7 18:56 ping-2018-06.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 56049692 Jun 1 01:55 ping-2018-05.txt |
The data from the MA is copied to a directory associated with the MA and read-write permissions set for group sf. We chose to use the FTP anonymous incoming directory path /afs/slac/public/incoming/pinger/proxy/ and this was set up. The PingER MA then copies the data to the above directory with the PingER MA hostname subdirectory, e.g.
169cottrell@pinger:~$ls -l /afs/slac/public/incoming/pinger/proxy/2001:da8:270:2018:f816:3eff:fef3:bd3/ total 23277 -rw-rw-r-- 1 saqibali sf 9360738 Jun 6 20:20 ping-2018-04.txt -rw-rw-r-- 1 saqibali sf 12394002 Jun 6 20:20 ping-2018-05.txt -rw-rw-r-- 1 saqibali sf 2079565 Jun 6 20:01 ping-2018-06.txt |
Since the user Ann does not have a SLAC user account this is done via anonymous ftp to ftp://ftp.slac.stanford.edu/incoming. If the directory does not exist then Ann will need to create the directory for her site, e.g. as seen above 2001:da8:270:2018:f816:3eff:fef3:bd3, i.e. having executed a cd /afs/slac/public/incoming/pinger/proxy/, then execute mkdir 2001:da8:270:2018:f816:3eff:fef3:bd3.
2. Due to security concerns*, we cannot access anonymous incoming FTP space from a web CGI script such as ping_data.pl (that is used by getdata.pl) thus we first move the data from the FTP anonymous space via a local (non-web job) to a space accessible via the web
Then the getdata.pl script runs nightly at SLAC and calls ping_data.pl via wget to gather the data for all the active MAs (including the proxies). Getdata.pl saves the gathered data in:
/nfs/slac/g/net/pinger/pingerdata/hep/data/<host>/ping-<YYYY>-<MM>.txt /nfs/slac/g/net/pinger/pingerdata/hep/data/2001:da8:270:2018:f816:3eff:fef3:bd3/ping-2018-06.txt |
If this is done manually the SLAC account will need permissions to create a directory in /nfs/slac/g/net/pinger/pingerdata/hep/data/. This directory has permissions for user pinger and group iepm
176cottrell@pinger:~$ls -ld /nfs/slac/g/net/pinger/pingerdata/hep/data drwxrwsr-x 220 pinger iepm 32768 May 16 00:45 /nfs/slac/g/net/pinger/pingerdata/hep/data/ |
To add the user to the iepm group
178cottrell@pinger:~$ypgroup adduser -group iepm -u saqibali Jun 7 10:30:33 2018 User(s) 'saqibali' added to group 'iepm' Jun 7 10:30:33 2018 User(s) must logout/login for this to take effect. Jun 7 10:30:33 2018 Starting NIS post actions. Jun 7 10:30:33 2018 [/usr/ccs/bin/make group] copied group to /afs/slac/service/admin/NIS updated group pushed group 179cottrell@pinger:~$ypgroup exam -group iepm Group 'iepm': GID: 2087 Comment: Last modified at Jun 7 10:30:32 2018 by cottrell Owners: cottrell Members: cottrell, iepm, pinger, saqibali, ytl This is a secondary group. |
The steps are automated with synchronized cronjobs.
getdata.pl is then scheduled to run at SLAC to copy the selected data from the accessible directory /nfs/slac/g/net/pinger/pingerdata/hep/data/proxy/2001:da8:270:2018:f816:3eff:fef3:bd3/
The various jobs have to be synchronized:
/nfs/slac/g/net/pinger/pingerdata/hep/data/<host>/ping-<YYYY>-<MM>-<DD>.txt.gz
The analysis of the hourly data by analyze-all.pl needs to start after getdata.pl has completed. Currentlyanalyze-all.pl starts as a cron job at 55 minutes past 2 am local time at SLAC each morning. The scheduling of the jobs at SLAC is shown below:
32 1 * * * /afs/slac/ package /pinger/getdata.pl > /afs/slac/g/www/www-iepm/pinger/slaconly/getdata.err 55 2 * * * /afs/slac/ package /pinger/analysis/analyze-all.pl --date 1days #Takes 25 : 14 10 / 20 / 2011 ( 55 mins 9 / 21 / 2011 , 70 minutes 5 / 11 / 2018 ) |
The analyzed data from analyze-all.pl is saved in files of the form below, the contents are described in PingER data flow at SLAC:
/nfs/slac/g/net/pinger/pingerreports/hep/<metric>/<metric>-<len>-<by>-<year>-<month>-<day>.txt.gz#len= 100 | 1000 , by=by-node|by-site. /nfs/slac/g/net/pinger/pingerreports/hep/minimum_rtt/minimum_rtt- 100 -by-node- 2011 - 05 - 01 .txt.gz |
See https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/PingER+data+flow+at+SLAC for the data flow. The use of the proxy is triggered by the NODEDETAIL Data Server entry (e.g. proxy=1) to tell ping_data.pl to gather the data from the SLAC anonymous ftp server (via the copy)that is basically acting as a proxy.
This whole mechanism is also interesting since it could be extended and a step to providing support for the Android PingER project at Amity in Delhi, India which also needs a proxy.
The CGI script ping_data.pl provides remote access to PingER information at the MA. Besides providing access to the measured data, this also provides validation and debugging information (e.g. logging information from execution of pinger2.pl, the pinger.xml configuration file, the version of pinger2.pl running, the pinger.pl environment at the MA, etc). However, it is not possible to access the Beijing website (or a PingER Android) from outside. Thus we need a solution to provide access to the various information that ping_data.pl provides for the MA. This includes (where for example:
We address items 1 thru 8 by Beijing copying the files to anonymous incoming FTP at SLAC on a daily basis at the same time the actual data is copied. Thus the files (updated as of the previous night) would be available for review. Since Bejing has a copy of ping_data.pl is used to access the files so they can be copied.
The NFS files are located in: /nfs/slac/g/net/pinger/pingerdata/hep/data/proxy/2001:da8:270:2018:f816:3eff:fef3:bd3/web/
[cottrell@pinger ~]$ ls -l /nfs/slac/g/net/pinger/pingerdata/hep/data/proxy/2001:da8:270:2018:f816:3eff:fef3:bd3/web total 288 -rw-rw-r-- 1 cottrell iepm 16844 Sep 21 01:05 beacons.txt #item 4 above -rw-rw-r-- 1 cottrell iepm 15101 Sep 21 01:05 cgi-lib.pl #missing above, not needed -rw-rw-r-- 1 cottrell iepm 51968 Sep 21 01:05 ping_data.pl #missing above, not needed -rw-rw-r-- 1 cottrell iepm 40625 Sep 21 01:05 pinger.xml #item 1 above -rw-rw-r-- 1 cottrell iepm 63779 Sep 21 01:05 pinger2.pl #item 7 above -rw-rw-r-- 1 cottrell iepm 924 Sep 21 01:05 pingerCronStat.stdout #item 3 above |
The Androids do not have a web server so using ping_data.pl to remotely look at the information in the MNA is not going to work. Thus we cannit use ping_data.pl in the process to copy the relevant information to the proxy, so some new code would be needed to copy the files to the proxy. To simplify this we note below the locations of various files in the table below.
Purpose | Primary location at MA | Alternative location | ping_data.pl URL | NFS web/location at SLAC | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
List of beacons | /usr/local/share/pinger/beacons.txt | admin_func=beacons | beacons | ||
PingER configuration | Generated by ping_data.pl on demand | admin_func=fileLog | fileLog | ||
httpd | /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf | admin_func=httpd | httpd | ||
ping_data.pl | /usr/local/share/pinger/ping_data.pl | N/A | ping_data.pl | ||
pinger2.pl | /usr/local/share/pinger/pinger2.pl | N/A | pinger2.pl | ||
pinger.xml | /usr/local/share/pinger/pinger.xml | admin_func=pinger.xml | pinger_xml | ||
pinger2.pl error log | /usr/local/share/pinger/pingerCronStat.stderr | admin_func=std_cron_err | std_cron_err | ||
pinger2.pl execution log | /usr/local/share/pinger/pingerCronStat.stdout | admin_func=std_cron_out | std_cron_out |
'* If an anonymous ftp server allows anonymous upload, and also world read access, it quickly becomes a haven for stolen software distribution
'** It moves all the files (except ./ and ../) from for example /afs/slac/public/incoming/pinger/proxy/2001:da8:270:2018:f816:3eff:fef3:bd3/. Hence after a successful move the files will no longer be in /afs/slac/public/incoming/pinger/proxy/2001:da8:270:2018:f816:3eff:fef3:bd3/ but should be in /nfs/slac/g/net/pinger/pingerdata/hep/data/proxy/2001:da8:270:2018:f816:3eff:fef3:bd3/