TetraPower 970MP (CANCELED) Project
Public General use/compiling serverin category Applications & Software
proposed by DaBlitz on 18th February 2006
Project Proposal
Public General use/compiling server:This is part 1 (the hardware permitting part) of http://projects.ppczone.org/projects.php?pending=373
Index
1. Outline
2. Implementation
3. Security
4. Deliverables
5. Extra Deliverables
1. Outline
I propose to build a system that is publicly available for compiling code and testing multi-threaded applications, Cluster development (hardware permitting) as well as a server for developers upon request (eg web/sql/game prototype)
This would be a fully public server and would be up 24/7 with a backup power supply in case of power faliure (that tends to be rare in these parts)
2. Implementation
The system would allow for anon logins that would then allow a user to register an account if they require storage or dedicated processing time
Several compilers would be available to allow for testing (eg gcc 3.4 and gcc 4.0.2) and development tools to write and compile code, commonly available tools would be in the usual directories and users wishing to run there own tools are free to do so within their /home directory, upon request these tools could be made available system wide
3. Security
All communications would be over ssh and the entire system reinforced with a restrictive selinux policy to prevent abuse of the system (eg spam relay), this would also include fire walling all out going communications both in the kernel and with several external firewalls
4. Deliverables
By the end of this project i hope to have developed a framework which would allow for users who have been assigned roles to administer the server without specialized tools (ie within the standard Linux capabilities such as groups, access control lists, file system capabilities (such as append only files in ext3) and Pluggable authentication modules). however i hope to make the system as independent and abuse proof as possible so that a user may register an account without admin intervention and schedule time blocks of CPU and MEM usage where the normal limits imposed by the pluggable authentication modules are lifted for that user
5. Extra Deliverables
Finally (hardware permitting) i would like to make the system available for cluster work, and using all nodes in the cluster for the above purpose by transparent load balancing of incoming connections and sharing of resources by all devices in the cluster, i also hope to extend the framework above to allow reserving time on more than 1 PC at the same time for clustering
Once Xen becomes avalile for the platform i hope to run multiple distros so that a program can be tested quickly and easily against several targets, this would all be under a centrelised authentication system such as keberos runing in a guest domain to prevent hacking (Dom0 acsess will be serial port only) all home dirs will also be mounted on another machine and shared over nfs an a virtual network to unify development work and make testing as painless as posible, with this i hope to build a single sign on for login as well as shared home dirictories over NFS for all distros that are reunnung (including those on other pysical hardware) to allow stateless transition between distros and reduce headaces for developers.
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