Archer:FAQs
From Grid-Appliance Wiki
Archer Frequently Asked Questions
Contacting Archer users and developers
Is there a user's group or mailing list where I can ask questions about Archer?
Yes; follow this link to join the Archer user's group. You can also follow this link to join the Grid appliance user's group.
How do I contact the Archer PIs?
Check our Archer:People page for Web sites and contact information of the Archer PIs.
Archer infrastructure uses
Is Archer free to use?
Yes.
Can Archer be used by applications other than computer architecture?
Yes, but only Archer Local; Archer Global is restricted to computer architecture applications.
Can Archer be used for commercial purposes?
Archer Local kind of pools may be used within your own enterprise for commercial purposes. However, the community infrastructures Archer Express and Archer Global are limited to academic research and education use only.
Is Archer available to users outside the United States?
Yes - users from across the world are welcome to join Archer.
What is Archer Express?
It's a small-scale Archer pool that is quick to join and use - no user accounts or registration is needed, and communications are not encrypted. It's meant for first-time users to test-drive the system. Click here for a self-guided tutorial for Archer Express.
What is Archer Global?
It's the main wide-area Archer pool, where hundreds of CPUs will be available beginning in the Fall of 2008. It is meant for academic educators, researchers, and students. You can connect with resources of your own and seamlessly contribute cycles to the community when idle. Registration is required, and all communications are encrypted. Management is handled in a centralized fashion by Archer staff. Click here for a self-guided tutorial on Archer Global.
What is Archer Local?
It is a local area network deployment of the Archer software, independent from the wide-area pool. Management is not handled locally, not by Archer staff.
Archer software stack
Is Archer open-source?
Yes. The baseline Archer software is based on Linux, Condor and IPOP, all of which are open-source projects.
What distribution of Linux is used in Archer?
Ubuntu 10.04
What is the role of VMs in Archer?
They provide sandboxing of applications for security/isolation purposes, and facilitate packaging and dissemination of software as virtual appliances.
Which VMs are supported by Archer?
Currently: VMware, KVM, and VirtualBox
What job scheduler is used by Archer?
Condor, a robust system widely used around the world. click her to read some of Condor success stories in applications domains including computer architecture
What applications can run on Archer?
In the typical case, Linux 32-bit x86 binaries work on Archer, unmodified. Examples of computer applications that run in the system include SESC, Simics, SimpleScalar, Cacti, SPIM.
Joining and Contributing to Archer
How do I register?
Please follow the tutorial for Archer Global.
Can I contribute with content to the Archer Wiki?
Absolutely. We do require that you create an account through the main Grid appliance portal. We do this in order to avoid spam. We use MediaWiki, a popular Wiki implementation. For help editing pages, click here.
Can I contribute with resources to Archer?
Absolutely. If you are an industrial sponsor contributing with VMs to Archer, we will be glad to acknowledge your contribution in our sponsors page.
Acknowledging Archer
What URL should I use to point to the main Archer site?
How do I acknowledge Archer in publications?
If you use Archer, please reference the paper: R. Figueiredo et. al, "Archer: A Community Distributed Computing Infrastructure for Computer Architecture Research and Education", in Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Collaborative Computing (CollaborateCom), Orlando, FL, Nov. 2008.
If you are in one of the sites that has been funded by the Archer project (UFL, FSU, UTA, UMN, NWU, NEU), please also acknowledge the Archer funding as follows: This work is sponsored by the National Science Foundation under CRI collaborative awards 0751112, 0750847, 0750851, 0750852, 0750860, 0750868, 0750884, and 0751091.
(This paper is an extended version of technical report arXiv:0807.1765v1).
Security in Archer
How are virtual machines authenticated to use Archer?
In Archer Global, a public key cryptography infrastructure is used: VMs need to be loaded with signed X.509 certificates signed by Archer management in order to join the Archer Global pool.
In Archer Express, anonymous usage is allowed.
What privilege does a job from remote user "X" have when running in my resource?
Remote jobs run as UNIX user "nobody" within a virtual machine sandbox. Archer staff has access to the UNIX root account on Archer Global and Archer Express resources (not Archer Local) through SSH for remote management purposes.
What software provides access control to resources connected to Archer?
Access control is mediated by Condor. Users do not have direct access to your virtual machine, except through Condor.
Can Archer jobs access non-Archer resources within my network or on the Internet?
No. Archer jobs can only send packets to other virtual machines within the Archer virtual network. Packets sent to other Internet hosts are blocked by a firewall. We sandbox virtual network traffic to avoid the use of Archer to launch denial-of-service attacks.
Archer usage questions
I have a question not covered in this FAQ - who do I contact?
Please join the Archer user's group, and use the group to post your question. That way it can be answered by Archer administrators, or by other users.
I've started an Archer appliance but it does not seem to be connected to the resource pool. What is wrong?
THere could be several reasons for this. Please check the Appliance FAQs for detailed troubleshooting information.
I'm having connectivity problems that may be due to my router/NAT/DMZ. Is there anything I can do to improve this?
Archer is able to deal with a large number of NATs/routers transparently to you, but in some cases the configuration of your NAT/router may be preventing your Archer VM from properly connecting. Please follow the Appliance FAQs link to find out possible ways to deal with this problem.
I'm connected to an Archer pool, but Simics does not run - what is the problem?
Typically, this could be due to a) the Simics license server being offline, or b) you may be connected to Archer Express rather than Archer Global. Double-check that you have used the floppy image obtained from the Archer user page as described in the Archer Global tutorial.
condor_q shows I have several jobs marked as Idle, and they have been submitted a while ago - is this normal?
If the Archer pool is under high utilization, your jobs will be idle in your queue. Predicting how long they will be idle is difficult, as it is a function of your priority, priority of others, number of resources available that match your requirements, etc. You can analyze your job requirements with:
condor_q -analyze
Which will give you more information about how many machines may be available to run your jobs - for instance, if you specify large memory requirements you may be only available to use a subset of the pool.
I would like to connect a pool of resources to Archer - how do I configure it such that users from my group have higher priority in this pool?
Please follow the directions in this HOW-TO: Configuring priorities for a group of VMs
I would like to run simulations with large datasets and use the Archer NFS file system - how do I do this?
Please follow the directions in this HOW-TO: Sharing files using NFS (Network File System)
