Seaside/Squeak/Linux: service with GUI as needed

Lukas,

With respect to "plug it in and throw the switch," you mention that it
is possible.  Are there any tricks to it, other than setting up the
Squeak/Pharo image as a service?  Are the following links worthy of
attention?

 
http://onsmalltalk.com/programming/smalltalk/seaside/my-journey-to-linux/
 
http://onsmalltalk.com/programming/smalltalk/scaling-seaside-redux-enter-the-penguin/


Re configuration, most of it would be things that I would do through
Seaside.  The exact details (Seaside served from "the" image doing the
work, or a Seaside image along side of other images doing the real work)
will depend on my experience with reliability.  I have read widely
differing reports on what to expect, and need to try it.  My BibTeX
gizmo looks like it will be the sentinel.

OmniBrowser is prominent in your reply.  What feature(s) of it earn that
position?

RemoteFrameBuffer looks like it could be very useful, though it appears
to encrypt only for password exchange.  Do you have any concerns about
its security?  Assuming I am seriously paranoid about such things (gotta
be with medical records), should *I* be concerned about its security?  I
reserve the right to be concerned regardless of your reply, but I am
curious about your take on it.

Thanks!

Bill




==========================
Lukas Renggli renggli at gmail.com
Sat Jul 12 19:52:46 UTC 2008

>  (1) Pharo image(s) run as service(s); the computer is (ab)used pretty
>  much as an appliance; technicians are told to plug in the network
cable,
>  then turn on the box, and if all is well, it "just works".

That's already possible.

>  (2) most (Smalltalk) configuration tasks happen via a Seaside
interface.

What configuration tasks? If these are not yet available an interface
could certainly be built. OmniBrowser and the XUL integration is also
a possibility here.

>  (3) I realize that I can edit code through Seaside's halos, but I
will
>  sometimes want to interact graphically with the Squeak image; it will
be
>  doing other things beyond serving Seaside pages.  I envision (please
>  tell me if there are better ways) making a remote desktop (or
similar)
>  connection to the server, stopping the offending service, and
restarting
>  it as a desktop user to debug, save the changed image, exit, restart
the
>  service, and log out.

OmniBrowser.

>  Is this a SSH/VNC task, or is there a better way.  Some things I have
>  read appear to suggest that one can simply use VNC to attach to the
>  running Squeak service and a GUI instantly appears???  That seems too
>  slick to expect it to work.

RemoteFrameBuffer is perfect to do that. Like this you start you image
headless on the server, and use a VNC client to connect to the screen
from anywhere. I use that on all my servers.

>  Do things change if one replaces Linux with Windows?  I am trying to
>  escape, but it will take some time to complete the transfer.

Linux is great for deployment. A long time ago I did some deployment
on Windows servers. What's inside the image (e.g. RemoteFrameBuffer)
works equally well. The host OS is not so cool ...

Cheers,
Lukas

Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
University of Florida
Department of Anesthesiology
PO Box 100254
Gainesville, FL 32610-0254

Email: [hidden email]
Tel: (352) 846-1285
FAX: (352) 392-7029

_______________________________________________
seaside mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside

On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 7:00 AM, Bill Schwab <[hidden email]> wrote:

> RemoteFrameBuffer looks like it could be very useful, though it appears
> to encrypt only for password exchange.  Do you have any concerns about
> its security?  Assuming I am seriously paranoid about such things (gotta
> be with medical records), should *I* be concerned about its security?  I
> reserve the right to be concerned regardless of your reply, but I am
> curious about your take on it.

We have modified the RemoteFrameBuffer package to only listen on the
internal IP.  To access it from the outside, we use an ssh tunnel, eg,

ssh -L 5900:localhost:5900 server.example.com

And then we point our VNC client at localhost:0.

This ensures the the network traffic is encrypted, and uses ssh as an
additional level of authentication.

Avi
_______________________________________________
seaside mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside

>  is possible.  Are there any tricks to it, other than setting up the
>  Squeak/Pharo image as a service?  Are the following links worthy of
>  attention?
>
>  http://onsmalltalk.com/programming/smalltalk/seaside/my-journey-to-linux/
>  http://onsmalltalk.com/programming/smalltalk/scaling-seaside-redux-enter-the-penguin/

Sure, that's about the setup I am using . The config file for Apache
looks like the one for my web-site, I guess this is a modified one
that I once published here in the list.

>  Re configuration, most of it would be things that I would do through
>  Seaside.  The exact details (Seaside served from "the" image doing the

That would be a cool project that could provide another brick into a
full-stack Seaside solution.

>  OmniBrowser is prominent in your reply.  What feature(s) of it earn that
>  position?

You were talking about editing code from the web.

OmniBrowser is a browser framework that is independent of the GUI.
Most people probably use it with Morphic, but there is also an
interface to the web (not Seaside based) and XUL (Seaside based).
OmniBrowser has implementations of all the common code browser and a
full integration with the refactoring tools. Furthermore there are
implementations of workspace, transcript, file-browser, inspector,
debugger, process browser and monticello-tools available. OmniBrowser
is much more sophisticated than WABrowser and friends, and essentially
everything you need to de everything you need to do development.

I am just wondering why many people keep on ignoring it. I use
OmniBrowser exclusively for all my development for more than 2 years
now. It should replace all the crappy existing tools (but that's
another discussion).

>  RemoteFrameBuffer looks like it could be very useful, though it appears
>  to encrypt only for password exchange.  Do you have any concerns about
>  its security?  Assuming I am seriously paranoid about such things (gotta
>  be with medical records), should *I* be concerned about its security?  I
>  reserve the right to be concerned regardless of your reply, but I am
>  curious about your take on it.

VNC is in-secure by design. It is supposed to be used through a SSH
connection as Avi describes.

Cheers,
Lukas

--
Lukas Renggli
http://www.lukas-renggli.ch
_______________________________________________
seaside mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside

On Tue, July 15, 2008 12:15 pm, Lukas Renggli wrote:

Lukas (or anyone else that wants to chime in) :

Is there anything akin to Omnibrowser for VW?  Just curious as there are
times that I can do some work but may not be on the machine in question..
Thx!

_______________________________________________
seaside mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside

>>>>> "Lukas" == Lukas Renggli <[hidden email]> writes:

Lukas> I am just wondering why many people keep on ignoring it. I use
Lukas> OmniBrowser exclusively for all my development for more than 2 years
Lukas> now. It should replace all the crappy existing tools (but that's
Lukas> another discussion).

The last time I looked at it, the OB code pane was missing my essential
"senders of methods sent in this method" and "implementors of methods sent in
this method".  All it had was "senders of this method" and "implementors of
this method".

If that hasn't changed, it still makes OB a non-starter for me.

And this is just to answer your question.  I found it easier to go back to the
classic browser than to even figure out who to ask to get this fixed, or how
to fix it myself.

--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<[hidden email]> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See http://methodsandmessages.vox.com/ for Smalltalk and Seaside discussion
_______________________________________________
seaside mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside

> Lukas (or anyone else that wants to chime in) :
>
>  Is there anything akin to Omnibrowser for VW?  Just curious as there are
>  times that I can do some work but may not be on the machine in question..
>  Thx!

I don't know, it is the baby of Colin. OmniBrowser should be fairly
easy to port, for example it is the default browser of GemStone.

Lukas

--
Lukas Renggli
http://www.lukas-renggli.ch
_______________________________________________
seaside mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside

On 15-Jul-08, at 1:49 PM, Lukas Renggli wrote:

There's no port to VW, as far as I know.

I don't see any major roadblocks, just a whole bunch of little issues  
and incompatibilities to deal with. On the other hand, VW's native  
toolset is pretty good, so there's not much motivation to do it.

Colin
_______________________________________________
seaside mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside