Sorry guys I feel like an idiot, as I sent this email to the wrong list. :-(
-----Original Message----- From: owner-ag-t...@mcs.anl.gov [mailto:owner-ag-t...@mcs.anl.gov] On Behalf Of Jason Bell Sent: Tuesday, 5 September 2006 11:44 PM To: ag-tech Subject: [AG-TECH] RE: [AG-DEV] Parallelize some of the functions of the Start-Up for the Venue Client G'day all I think I should mention that while testing my own AG 3 Bridge, I was one of those "baddies" as well. What this highlighted is how easily it would be for someone to "simply" create a "baddy" bridge without realising it. The purpose for my testing was to add additional documentation on my install guide on how to configure a unicast bridge and Venue Server for AG 3. I am very reluctant to release any documentation that shows how to configure a Bridge as it may inadvertently create more "baddies", thus causing the AG3 VenueClient to be almost unusable due to the long start-up time. Anyway, some constructive comments in my opinion on ways we could possibly improve this would be: * Having the Load_Bridge() run/execute as a separate process/thread in which would operate independent of the starting up of the VenueClient itself. The benefits of this could be: - Running as a separate process shouldn't affect the performance of starting the Venue Client, etc. - Also, you could re-run this function separately which would continually update the latest list of bridges. As I have found recently that the list of bridges is only as accurate to when the VenueClient was first started. * Another idea, based upon Rhys's suggestion is that if something doesn't respond after a short delay (rather than a time out), then don't list the bridge. This would then only list bridges that would be acceptable to use. The downside of this is that the list of bridges "WILL" grow and still cause some delay, though not as long. * Based upon Andrew's suggestion, having the ability for a Bridge to Register to different registries, would allow (I think) the bridges to be assigned to various regions. That way, a registry could list "Good" unicast bridges for the various regions, cutting down the number of bridges tested and loaded. I honestly think that the possible solution to this problem is most likely a combination of some of the suggestions above, and possibly some other ideas. Anyway, I think this is a very important issue and hopefully we may be able to come up with some real "fixes" to the problem. Cheers, Jason. -----Original Message----- From: Christoph Willing [mailto:will...@vislab.uq.edu.au] Sent: Tuesday, 5 September 2006 4:54 PM To: Rhys Hawkins Cc: Jason Bell; ag-...@mcs.anl.gov Subject: Re: [AG-DEV] Parallelize some of the functions of the Start-Up for the Venue Client On 04/09/2006, at 3:45 PM, Rhys Hawkins wrote: [snip] > I've commented out line 125 in AccessGrid/Registry/ > RegistryClient.py, ie: > #self.bridges = self._sortBridges(maxToReturn) > I don't know whether this will help your colleague or not. It > certainly > makes things quicker for me. If you're just testing a local bridge > then > you could just stick you local bridge description in the beginning > of the > list to fake the sort. Although this is just hacking for testing > purposes > and doesn't solve the actual problem. I was doing something similar (VenueClient.py at line 199, comment out self.__LoadBridges()), which is fine if you don't need bridges. Today I needed to connect to a site whose only visibility was through a bridge they were running, so I had to reinstate them, but block the baddies. I now have a list of offending bridges inserted at the beginning of the PingBridgeService() definition (line 63) in RegistryClient.py. These sites are skipped as follows: def PingBridgeService(self, bridgeProxy): banned = ['some.site', 'another.site'] for b in banned: if bridgeProxy._ServerProxy__host.startswith(b): return -1 self.log.info('PingBridgeService: trying %s' % bridgeProxy._ServerProxy__host) etc. as before The extra logging line shows progress through the bridges a bit better and identifies new baddies. Of course its cumbersome to edit RegistryClient.py everytime a new baddy is detected (there have been a few recently), but I generally have a fast start up now, as well as having access to "good" bridges. Maybe a separate configuration file containing the baddies would be better; the VenueClient could consult it at startup before processing the bridge list. chris Christoph Willing +61 7 3365 8350 QCiF/QPSF Access Grid Manager University of Queensland
