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06/20/07
Cross University Open-Source Collaboration
06/20/07
Goal
Offer rationale for open collaborationand
share experiences
I will be asking questions of you throughout!
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Overview of Presentation
• Why open source software (OSS)?• Rescomp's Environment and Experience• Your Environment and Experience• Moving forward• Discussion
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Open vs Closed
• Open– Dependent on community rather than vendor– Can customize as needed– Potentially larger support base
• Closed– Vulnerable to vendor's business decisions– Staff aren't necessarily needed for modifications
http://www.edtechmag.com/higher/may-june-2007/focus.html
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Must we be open?
• Public funding – public goods• Student staff may learn more from OSS• It's not obvious either way.• However, 'should' or 'can'...it's fun!
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Observations
•Residential Networks within Universities have a number of shared “problem domains”.•Not all Residential Networks have the same problem domains or resources.•Resnet provides a coordination point for those who could benefit from working together.
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Example Projects
• Kuali – Core systems infrastructure and apps• Sakai – Educational Collaboration• Tillikum – Housing Info Managment• NetReg – Network Access Control• VT WSUS – Windows Patch Management• And many more...how will we know what's
available?!
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Rescomp's Environment
• Approximately 50 staff members• 8000 node network• Customer support for ~7000 residents• 30 *nix or BSD servers• 8 student staff working on software• Oversight by peer review and several career
staff
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Rescomp's Experience
• Bugzilla – 6 years of use• TWiki – 1.5 years of use• Mailman – 1 instance for more than 6 years• PostgreSQL – several instances for most of site for 6
years• Request Tracker – in development
Have not opened in-house applications but have participated in wider OSS community through various uses.
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Issue Tracking
• In-House– We have an integrated helpdesk that frontline
support staff use.– Also a web-based computer lab issue tracker
• OSS– Bugzilla – for use internally for both software and
non-software requests– Request Tracker – replacement for simple Mailman
lists
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Bugzilla
• Business Need– Issue Tracking– Procurement
• Technical Challenges– Requires management of LAMP stack
• Results– Met small group needs over 6 years– Awkward for non-software issues
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Documentation/Collaboration
• In-House– Docbook SGML wrapper
• OSS– Twiki – Used for team coordination, meeting
minutes, one-off issue tracking– Mailman archives for searching– Subversion hooks into Bugzilla
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TWiki
• Business Need– Centralized site-wide documentation
• Technical Challenge– Maintenance– Performance
• Results– Increased and more useful documentation– Additions through plugins were very useful
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User Management
• In-House– Sync scripts in cron written in perl
• OSS– OpenLDAP – Used for several purposes as well as
user management– Samba – Used in combination with OpenLDAP for
Windows integration– Jxplorer – Manipulation of LDAP directory– PostgreSQL – Long term reliable storage of user
data for use in web apps
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PostgreSQL
• Business Need– Storage of user information
• Technical Challenge– Requires tuning
• Results– Received fantastic support through community
mailing lists, IRC, and documentation.
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Server Management
• In-House– ConfMan – Configuration management– Misc scripts in crons
• OSS– Nagios – Monitoring and issue tracking with
Bugzilla– FreeBSD – Our OS of choice– NFS, PAM, LDAP – Technologies we used to provide
a consistent working environment
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FreeBSD Operating System
• Business Need– Support for windows workstations
• Technical Challenges– Managing many server configurations with small
part-time staff.• Results
– Easily manageable lightweight server infrastructure– Great support from mailing lists and
documentation
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Our In-House Software
• Current Applications– NAC– Helpdesk– Web-based Computer Lab Management– Hour tracking for front-line support staff– Security Case Handler
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Q/A and Info Gathering
• What is your environment like?• What has been your experience with OSS?• What have you written in-house?
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Possible Approaches
• Rewrite applications together• Release what we have and let others modify• Sanitize & Generalize• Agree on standards that allow interoperation
and then divide and conquer
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Challenges for Opening Up
• Would require a high degree of customizations• Ontology and Business Logic specific to
departmental groups, i.e. alphabet soups.• IP Conflicts with University
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Will opening up work for you?
• We've heard about a few environments.• We've seen some challenges and approaches.• How can we find out?
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What have people tried?
• Who has:– ...tried incorporating someone's work?– ...released their in-house software?
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What could be next?
• Community Portal - Sakai?• Standards Group - Kuali?• Sharing what we have:
– Software Registry, e.g. Sourceforge– Mailing lists– BoF – Tuesday 11:30am in IR/PS
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Discussion• Will Open Source work for ResNet?• Is Kuali enough?• How can we avoid “design by committee”?• What can we do now?
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Evaluations
• Go to “Presentation Evaluations” at:
http://resnetsymposium.org/resnet2007
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