[Paraview] Distributing PVSC files (ParaView 4.0)

Tue Aug 23 12:16:37 EDT 2011

Yes, and this has worked OK, at least no one complained, but I think 
that it's success has more to do with a small number of users involved 
rather than the strength of this approach.

On 08/23/2011 08:52 AM, Angelini, Richard C USA CIV (US) wrote:
> We just pick a random port between 2000 and 65000 ... the chances are pretty slim (but not absolutely zero) for stepping on another process, right?   8-)
>
>
> ________________________________
> Rick Angelini
> USArmy Research Laboratory
> Computation Science&Engineering Branch/
> ARL/DSRC (DoD Shared Resource Center)
> Phone:  410-278-6266
>
> ________________________________________
> From: paraview-bounces at paraview.org [paraview-bounces at paraview.org] on behalf of Burlen Loring [bloring at lbl.gov]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2011 11:44 AM
> To: Utkarsh Ayachit
> Cc: paraview at paraview.org; gtg085x at mail.gatech.edu
> Subject: Re: [Paraview] Distributing PVSC files (ParaView 4.0)
>
> Hi Utkarsh,
>
> It sounds like you need a very flexible solution, or even multiple
> solutions, given the variety of use cases you have to support.
>
> You hit on a great point re python approach
>> allows us to write code to discover informationabout the client/server
>> and take appropriate action(s).
> Which brings up another pvsc related issue could PV reliably find an
> open port when constructing the ssh tunnel from PV over to the HPC site.
> I don't think it's currently possible to script this.
>
> Burlen
>
> On 08/23/2011 08:22 AM, Utkarsh Ayachit wrote:
>> Tim,
>>
>> That's was exactly what I was concerned about when it comes to using
>> libssh. Good to know that there are indeed such use-cases and not
>> merely hypothetical ones.
>>
>> Utkarsh
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 11:18 AM, Tim Gallagher
>> <tim.gallagher at gatech.edu>   wrote:
>>> I know for our HPC access, they require a custom version of SSH that has been security enhanced. So if PV used a built-in libssh, we would be unable to use PV to connect through to them.
>>>
>>> I don't have a better solution, just wanted to point out that packaging libssh without an option to use a system one would not work in some cases.
>>>
>>> Tim
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Utkarsh Ayachit"<utkarsh.ayachit at kitware.com>
>>> To: "Burlen Loring"<bloring at lbl.gov>
>>> Cc: "ParaView"<paraview at paraview.org>
>>> Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2011 9:38:38 AM
>>> Subject: Re: [Paraview] Distributing PVSC files (ParaView 4.0)
>>>
>>> Burlen,
>>>
>>> Good points. At the risk of stating the obvious let's note that we'll
>>> be able to distribute different pvsc versions for the server for
>>> different OSs and ParaView versions without any issue. Now locating
>>> ssh/xterm/plink etc are indeed real issues.
>>>
>>> I don't like the cmake approach, it requires that we need a separate
>>> step and would require users to install cmake (unless we include cmake
>>> in the binaries). libssh approach sounds interesting. The only concern
>>> is will users to reluctant to use a ssh client we provide rather than
>>> their chosen (and trusted one).
>>>
>>> Like John said, the file inputs are already supported in pvsc.
>>>
>>> Pat Marion has been pushing for the ability to have Python scripts
>>> instead-of/in-addition-to pvsc-xmls. I think that's another viable
>>> approach since it allows us to write code to discover information
>>> about the client/server and take appropriate action(s).
>>>
>>> Utkarsh
>>>
>>> On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 12:34 PM, Burlen Loring<bloring at lbl.gov>   wrote:
>>>> Hi Utkarsh,
>>>>
>>>> this looks great.
>>>>
>>>> One thing I have encountered and that you may want to think about is that a
>>>> single static pvsc is not going to work for all users as pvsc's depend on
>>>> external components such as xterm, ssh, and plink. These are in different
>>>> places on different user's systems, maybe not present on the user's system
>>>> leading to the pvsc not working.
>>>>
>>>> I could see a couple of different avenues to solve this: Probably the best
>>>> would be to integrate ssh tunneling into PV via libssh so that these
>>>> dependencies are not needed. An aleternative would be to include a configure
>>>> step in your new pvsc import process (like cmake) where dependencies are
>>>> located and a system specific pvcs is generated. Something far easier and
>>>> less intrusive might be to add a file dialog element to the pvsc syntax so
>>>> that the user could easily  browse for these files. That's not as nice as
>>>> the other approaches because it clutters the UI and the user still has to
>>>> hunt down the files, but it at least gives them a method to do so.
>>>>
>>>> Burlen
>>>>
>>>> On 08/19/2011 02:15 PM, Utkarsh Ayachit wrote:
>>>>> Folks,
>>>>>
>>>>> A feature we are thinking of implementing for ParaView 4.0 is to make
>>>>> it easier to distribute pvsc files to connect to various HPC
>>>>> resources. I've sketched out a rough proposal for the same at
>>>>>
>>>>> http://paraview.org/ParaView3/index.php/Distributing_Server_Configuration_Scripts
>>>>>
>>>>> Any comments/suggestions are always welcome.
>>>>>
>>>>> Utkarsh
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