On 22/02/2012, at 4:06 PM, Gabriel Noronha wrote:
----
Gabriel Noronha
Access Grid Support Officer
University of Newcastle
Christoph Willing <c.will...@uq.edu.au> 19/02/12 9:32 PM >>>
On 18/02/2012, at 4:08 AM, Kevin Cole wrote:
Hi,
I just added another machine to our "posse" / "harem" / "commune",
and since it was a fresh install, I installed Oneiric (11.10). And
then, when things behaved oddly, I saw this on the University of
Queensland's site:
"Can't access ANL venue server. Actually, the connection is partial
- connected venues are visible but media and jabber text services
aren't started correctly. Interestingly, other venue servers, e.g.
APAG, can be connected to OK. The issue appears to be related to the
Python version being used in the client systems; up to python2.6
appears OK, while python2.7 (on Oneiric, Natty & Fedora 14) have the
connection problem."
With a Long Term Support (LTS) release coming up in a couple of
months, I was planning to upgrade all of my machines to that,
including the AG3 computers that are currently doing fine. Any
details on what makes Python 2.7 not tick? (I've got some stuff
moving into the 3.x version. So, it seems 2.6 is getting a bit long
in the tooth.)
I believe the problem is in the jabber code - on entering a venue,
one
of the VenueClient's tasks is to create and/or enter a jabber room
with the same name as the venue. This fails with python 2.7 (for some
reason) and prevents set up of the media tools, vic and rat.
I've verified this on a python 2.7 system by disabling text chat
completely in the VenueClient.py and VenueCLientUI.py, after which
I'm
able to fully enter previously troublesome venues.
Although that appears to identify where the problem lies, the problem
still needs to be fixed - I'm not sure who has time to look at that.
I had a quick look at the jabber code because i was hoping to reuse
it awhile ago... and basically it use a library that has been
abandoned. bajjer is the library and a google search seems to lead
to nothing but 404s
it's probably something that really needs to be ear marked as
needing a complete rewrite or swapping to a different protocol with
better library support IRC for example.
Interesting that you suggest a different protocol because I've been
thinking about exactly that for a while now. A particular possibility
(because I've used it elsewhere) is MQTT (http://mqtt.org/) for which
there is an open source version "mosquitto" (at http://mosquitto.org/)
which already has a python binding. I've made a simple standalone chat
app with it using wxPython for the gui as a proof of concept and it
seems to work really well. It probably wouldn't take too much effort
to use something like that to replace the existing jabber based text
chat.
The only drawback that I can see is that the MQTT based replacement
would be completely incompatible with the jabber version. Someone
could write a MQTT <-> XMTT gateway I guess ...
saying that with the picture in your first email i assumed you would
be nothing but RHEL boxes..
Between us, Doug & I have most of the Linux variants covered.
chris
Christoph Willing +61 7 3365 8316
Research Computing Centre
University of Queensland
