Pat K's dashboard

Hi Clive,

Yes. The command line update should work.
The visual interface via the Elastic Server Manager is morphing towards being a list of available updates since we haven't come up with a good way to handle the following:
1) Yum or Apt hangs (which happens a fair amount)
2) The update pops up a terminal UI asking questions.

Also - you have patch access here to publicly accessible components. If you have put in private components using our "Create Package/Bundle" feature we are still working on how to securely make those available to you.

Thanks -

Pat K

Hi Clive,

My apologies for letting this hang out there so long. We should be more responsive.

We are taking a look as this doesn't happen uniformly on all servers. (For example I can change mine, but when I look at your server URL from an Admin view - your's can't be edited.)

More to follow. And again, I apologize for the lag.

Pat Kerpan
CTO, CohesiveFT

What are you using for IKE and ESP? Please email config and error/reports
to support (at) elasticserver.com

OH - any just in your email - or here - please confirm you are using creds and trying to upload to Amazon, or are you trying to connect to a private Eucalyptus cloud?

Hi there,

Different elements of your creds (Access Key ID, Secret Access Key and x509 credentials) are used for different function calls in the API - so that is why some calls might work and others not.

The error you are getting seems to indicate a mismatch between your x509 creds that you have uploaded to Elastic Server and the set of x509 creds that is in you Amazon EC2 account.

So - you have confirmed that what is in ES for X509 is the same as what is currently listed in your EC2 aacount?

Also, if you email us at support (at) elasticserver.com we can look at your account and see if we can see anything. In the email provide us with you ES user id/contact email.

Cheers -

pk

You're hired!

Great feedback. You have intuited a great deal of the future here. Bundle dependencies have been planned exactly like that.

I like your "uploads" URI-ish approach.

Would be happy for a bit of a chat... pjkerpan (AT) cohesiveft.com

Hi RC -

Good questions.

Elastic Server can be thought of as a "meta packaging" system in that it uses other systems rather than attempting to re-do existing packaging.

In the event of upstream mirror stuff that can be used by apt-get or yum - we let those dependencies kick in. So when we use our admin function to point to a mirror package "foo" then when someone uses "foo" in a bundle - then they get "foo" plus its dependencies.

(In general we have been trying to figure out how to open the upstream mirror pointer functionality in the UI for users besides our admins, as well as let people type in dependencies)

"Bundles" are a form of simple declarative dependency which says "these things should all go together". A good example is rather than having a bundle with just a .WAR file, make a bundle with an appropriate Java, Tomcat and a .WAR. Bundles do not let you specify the order in which those things go in. Which in APT-related things is usually ok - because post-install scripts run after all the installs. In YUM-related things the post-installs run after each individual install, then things can go wrong. In our own usage this has pushed too many things into "run on first boot scripts". This has us thinking about letting you specify an order for the things to install via "loops of loops" if you want.

We have a "can't work together" database which we populate as a result of assembly failures. Things like "Package foo can't work with package bar". We would also like to open this up to other users for their own use.

Our current implementation attempts to bootstrap runtime language artifacts (ruby, java, python, etc) off of the APT and YUM capabilities as a result of the BYO import function basically putting them into a .deb or RPM. This has had mixed results.

The way I deal with Ruby Gems is to import them in a file system tree, then do a post-install script which does a local install. That way I am only getting things that I know I packaged up and I don't have a dependency on an outside mirror which may or may not respond at server assembly time.

Collisions can occur as in your example. Since we can't possibly know all the combinations that can't work - we use our conflict database. So when one user discovers a bad path which won't assemble because of dependency errors we put a rule in the database so the next person who tries those particular packages together gets a message "Foo won't work with Bar, please unselect one of them to proceed with your assembly.

Based on our experiences, and our user's experiences, we are looking at how to put more control in your hands, and to make the system more "URI" based, meaning rather than make you import an upstream package, we should just let you tell us the name, type and location of an artifact and the assembly nodes should then use the native installer for that artifact.

Follow up questions and comments invited. Happy to have a chat as well and hear your ideas in person.

pat k

Hi Nick,

Could you email support (AT) cohesiveft.com with info on the ami id you are launching? We can help you from there via email.

pat k

Hi there,

/var/lib/tomcat6.0

The server.xml file is in /var/lib/tomcat6.0/conf

You will need to "sudo su" and provide your password in order to access that directory.

Changing the tomcat app to use port 80 instead of 8080 should be easy enough.

pk

Hi there,

http://ip_address:2999 is needed just to access the Elastic Server Manager utility application.

The Open Blue Dragon is set up at http://ip_address:8080/openbd/

If you want to move it to: http://ip_adress:8080 - that would be a change to the Tomcat configuration.

If you want it to be http://ip_address
then that might require pinging the Open Blue Dragon folks at their forums. It involves either an internal network redirect from port 80 to 8080 (not super hard if you are comfortable with Linux iptables) or adding an Apache Server to the mix.

Let me know if that covers it.

Cheers,

pat k

Hi there,

Thanks for wanting to try VPN-Cubed. Even though there is no subscription fee other than EC2 costs, we still require you to register for the AMI at this URL:

https://aws-portal.amazon.com/gp/aws/...

Thanks,

Pat K

Hi,

Thanks for those suggestions. Sorry it took a little longer than I thought.

We have put in a fix into all Elastic Server new assemblies going forward (from about 10 minutes ago) which essentially puts in the missing tty nodes on EC2 when needed.

We implemented this as an Elastic Server "run on boot script" component which goes into all builds. If for some reason you don't want this script it is /etc/cft.d/onboot/tty-tweak-for-ec2

On the next release of our factory nodes for EC2 we will put in a more specific fix for EC2 only, and then remove the run-on-boot-script from all future assemblies.

Thanks for the patience.

Pat K
CohesiveFT

Hmm...

Thanks for the report - we will look into it.

HI Bennett,

Sorry about the problems. We did have an issue with one of our front end services this weekend.

Overall our service is reliable. We do have occasional down time - but it is mostly planned and you are notified of the time window in advance via the site it self.

We update the service weekly with new capabilities With that type of release cycle there are some bumps - but we do our best to keep new stuff coming combined with disruptions at a minimum.

Cheers,

Pat K
CTO, CohesiveFT

No - the free edition is currently an EC2-only offering. The uniformity and volume of EC2 means a lot of people get a lot of value out of the free edition - with very little need for support from us.

We can work with customers to provision VPN-Cubed paid edition Managers in their Rackspace/Mosso account.

Ok - now I think I understand. More answers to follow...

pk

Sorry. I must have understood you. I thought you wanted a "stock" Ubuntu server with no customization's done via Elastic Server.

"All the flexibility is great but I just need a quick Ubuntu 9.04, stock server. What's the quickest way to get that?"

If I share out a VM with you - you can download it - and do whatever customization you want by hand. Which is what I thought you wanted. If you want to be able to simply add any of the community components, or privately uploaded components to a Jaunty, then we can't meet your need until we publicly release Jaunty support.

The reason for the "bill of materials" approach of Elastic Server is that you can capture the instructions for a server of your design and then be able to rapidly re-deploy it to different Virtual Machine or Cloud Formats (VMware, Xen, Parallels, KVM, VIrtual Iron, EC2, Open Source Eucalyptus, ElasticHosts, etc) with a click of a button.

Elastic Server allows you to capture YOUR server design and share with others (who can then make an instance in any of the above formats, and often in their OS of choice) without having to know the pages of commands to build such a server themselves.

For examples see the Open Blue Dragon server or the Razuna server.
http://elasticserver.com/site/razuna
http://elasticserver.com/site/open-bl...

These Open Source teams deliver finished servers which their users can customize by adding software components, choosing their VM type or cloud. Lots of time saved by all.

Similar situations exist in the world of Appliance Vendors, Traditional ISVs and Enterprises.

We will post here when we turn on Jaunty for Community and Personal Edition accounts.

Cheers,

pk

Given all of the software components out there it is unlikely that any team, regardless of size, could keep them all up to date. Elastic Server allows you to import pretty much any software you want. You can then choose to keep it private or publish it to the community.

Here is an example of how to do that: http://www.cohesiveft.com/dnld/Elasti...

There is lots of software in ES you can't see - imported and used by people and teams to use for their projects.

We welcome contributions and updates from community members.

Cheers - pat k

PS. Regarding your previous question it it likely to be a couple weeks before we have Jaunty available to all the accounts. If you want a stock Jaunty in a particular VM format - let me know and I will make one and share it out to you. It will show up on your "Servers" page.

Whoops - what VM format?

Soon means we are testing and setting up the necessary mirror infra.

In the short run - sign up for the free edition - email me your elastic server user ID at pjkerpan (at) cohesiveft.com - and I will use our collaboration features to share out a Jaunty server to you for download.