Deployment Platform/Gateway

Background

This is one of the possible deployment scenarios for Deployment Platform. This page is intended to describe procedures for school servers that behave as gateways for school students.

Targeting environment

The standard targeting environment assumes:

• Dedicated hardware for school server;
• Client machines connected via Intranet to the server.

The final environment might be similar.

Server side

Run Sugar Network node

Attach 0.94:SugarNetwork Sweets Distribution repository and install the sugar-network package.

Before running installed server, populate the /etc/sugar-network/config configuration file with content similar to the following (to get the full list of configuration options, call the sugar-network-node config command):

[main]
# debug logging level; 0 means only warning and errors
debug = 3

# path to a directory to place log files
logdir = /var/log/sugar-network

# path to a directory to place pid files
rundir = /var/run/sugar-network

# if specified, use this directory for cached files; such files might take
# considerable number of bytes
cachedir = /var/cache/sugar-network

[node]
host = 0.0.0.0
port = 8000

# directories to place server data
data-root  = /var/lib/sugar-network/db
files-root = /var/lib/sugar-network/files
stats-root = /var/lib/sugar-network/stats

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

Make sure that all directories in the config file are created and the current user has write permissions there.

Run node server:

sugar-network-node start

Server will start serving Sugar Network API for clients from host:port specified in configuration file.

Synchronization with master node

Note that the newly installed Sugar Network node will be empty, its content should be fetched from the master node.

If school server has Internet connectivity, launch sugar-network-node and start online synchronization:

sugar-network-node online-sync

If only sneakernet is available:

sugar-network-node offline-sync PATH-TO-PLACE-SYNCHRONIZATION-FILES

The PATH-TO-PLACE-SYNCHRONIZATION-FILES path will contain files that should be uploaded to the master to download response. Postponed synchronization will happen by running the sugar-network-sync shell script (which will be created by offline-sync command in targeting path) in environment with Internet connectivity. Then, re-run offline-sync command specifying path with new file synchronization files.

Client side

Configuration

Clients should be pointed to the Sugar Network node launched on a school server. Populate the /etc/sweets.conf configuration file with the following options:

[client]
api-url = http://SCHOOL-SERVER-HOST-HERE:8000

Run Sugar Network clients

Follow the Try it install instructions to setup Sugar Network client.

While working, Sugar Network client logs can be found in the ~/.sugar/default/logs/sugar-network-client file. The logging verbosity level depends on the global Sugar setting.

Getting involved

• Subscribe to the sugar-devel mailing list and email with the subject prefixed with [PLATFORM].
• Ask your question on IRC channels, #sugar (not logged) or #sugar-newbies (logged).