Platform Team/Sugar Network/Implementation

Sugar Network version cycle: | 1.0 |

Summary

The design and implementation are tailored by the following intentions:

• Implementation should be as lightweight as possible to run all components on restricted hardware like XO laptops;
• Minimize any maintaining costs as much as possible to use Sugar Network in environments like offline schools where the only maintainers are not IT skilled people;
• Assume decentralization scheme when Sugar Network nodes might be started on different servers with further online or offline synchronization with the master.

To accomplish above tasks, Sugar Network content is handled by the active-document library which uses Xapian to index content and simple filesystem storage (might be changed in the future).

Sugar Network is represented by two major applications to run on Sugar Network node or users side:

• sugar-network-node, and,
• sugar-network-client.

In both cases, applications provide RESTful API as the only access point for outer usage. Any end users related functionality implemented in Sugar Network clients on top of API providers.

sugar-network-node

This application provides Sugar Network server functionality. Such functionality provided via the Sugar Network API.

The configuration occurs based on several sources (sorted by applied order):

• Command-line arguments (configuration names equal to command-line arguments),
• /etc/sugar-network/config system-wide configuration file,
• ~/.config/sugar-network/config user-wide configuration file.

To get the current configuration, call:

sugar-network-node config

The major configuration options are:

[node]
# path to a directory to place server data
data-root = /var/lib/sugar-network

# hostname to listen for incomming connections and using for publicly visible urls
host = 0.0.0.0

# port number to listen incomming connections
port = 8000

Note that `sugar-network-node` needs OpenSSH-5.6 or later to verify users' credentials. If you don't have such version, enable `--trust-users` to disable any verification:

[node]
# switch off user credentials check; disabling this option will require OpenSSH-5.6 or later
trust-users = True

Assuming that configuration was set properly, use the following commands to manipulate `sugar-network-node` daemon:

sugar-network-node start
sugar-network-node stop
sugar-network-node status

To run application in the foreground instead of switching to daemon mode, call:

sugar-network-node -F start

Optionally (next releases might have WebUI as a separate application), it is possible to run Web UI client from the same process if the following configuration options were set:

[webui]
# start web application to serve Sugar Network content
webui = True

# hostname to bind
webui-host = 0.0.0.0

# address to listen for Web clients
webui-port = 5000

Usage

Install sugar-network package from the Factory repository from Sweets Distribution or checkout sources from Gitorious:

git clone git://git.sugarlabs.org/network/network.git --recurse-submodules

See Also

• Sugar Network API.
• Distribution options.
• Sugar Network clients.

Getting involved

• Submit your bug report or feature request.
• Browse our implementation discussions, and post your feedback. (You should join this discussion list in order to avoid having your messages postponed for moderation.)