Meeting Notes for 15 October 2008 EVO Uses of Screencast for Recording LIGO e-Lab Discussion IT Job Progress on CMS New SWIFT System

Meeting Notes for 15 October 2008

Present: Mihael, Eric, Liz, Tom L.
Absent: Tom J. , Bob

EVO

We discussed EVO, the collaboration network again. Last week's minutes already covers this. We decided that we should try it next week. Setting up EVO may involve installing the Java Virtual Machine if it is not already installed. We should note what effort was involved. Our experience might apply to how using of java applets would affect our users. (e.g.,Dan’s graphical interface to allow cuts is based on java and would involve the installation of the JVM).

Eric suggested we might be able to check in with SC2008 using EVO. Tom L. does not want to put much time into this.

Action Item: Liz will email everyone and encourage them to set up EVO. DONE

Uses of Screencast for Recording

We discussed use of the "Screencast" system Tom L. introduced in the last meeting. Basically, it records whatever is on the screen, along with whatever comes in the microphone, all saved in a video file. The video file can be hosted from their server (Notre Dame has paid for this service, so we can use it through Tom) or downloaded and hosted on our own server.

Some of the possible uses:

• Recording our telecons
• Recording our talk-aloud exercises. Liz suggested talking to Jean Young about this. Eric and Tom want to have a working demo of the idea first, or else it's not worth bothering Jean about it.
• e-Lab for tutorials. The wikis can have tutorials that might possibly be served in the e-Lab through the wiki backend. For example, the Bluestone tutorial could be a more dynamic version of the PowerPoint tutorial John Kerr created, which Dale has then used in the e-Lab. There could be follow-up lessons on more advanced topics.

LIGO e-Lab Discussion

Tom, Dale and Eric going to meet this afternoon to talk about the e-Lab evaluation process, and how to get teachers involved in e-Lab activities.

IT Job

Possibly put something at SC2008 about the IT job.

Action Item: Liz will update the poster with an image from Bluestone for LIGO ( Eric will provide her a screen shot). Maybe printout on nicer paper?

Progress on CMS

Mihael is tied up trying to get SWIFT working better. Needs to make SWIFT work perfectly for SC2008.

CMS needs to be a group effort; with new SWIFT. We will need to test the new SWIFT with Cosmic.

New SWIFT

The new SWIFT is not too different from the previous, except for replication. It supports multi-site runs. Better throughputs using “Coasters”. Like “Glide-ins” – same thing in principle, done by Condor group. It bypasses a lot of the overhead by only doing authentication once. You can submit 100,000 jobs with one authentication instead of doing it for each.

System

Argonne – started; needed to move machines on new power outlet. (16 and 17 died for a few minutes). www10 converted. We may not be able to use packaged versions of Apache and PHP. Eric may need to build it with source on www10. He will need to notify Systems if there is a problem. He will update the status on our wiki.

-- Main.LizQuigg - 20 Oct 2008
-- Main.EricMyers - 20 Oct 2008