FAQs

  1. There are two primary ways of distributing required software for experiments:
* custom images


  * create a custom image with the appropriate configuration and software pre-loaded


  * use the location of the pre-loaded software in the image as the value for the SOFTWARE_HOME paramter in the Experiment XML





* use the `\proj` mounted file share on _emulab_ to copy files to and from experimental nodes. The following [link](https://wiki.emulab.net/wiki/kb81) contains additional information about this share.


* Note: Several of the images on _emulab_ and _PRObE (cmu)_ associated with the _Infosphere_ project already have fully mounted filesystems

  1. Some users use package managers like yum to install software like collectl; however, not all enviornments provide sufficient network access for package managers like yum

  2. Ensure tarball versions specified in the Experiment XML are available at the location SOFTWARE_HOME references. For example, some of the typical follies include:

* Mysql 5.0.x instead of 5.5.x


* systat 7.x instead of systat 10.x


* Instrumted vs. Uninstrumented Rubbos benchmark files. Instrumented versions are prefixed with "CA-."

  1. Some versions of operating systems do not support certain versions of monitoring tools (sysstat). For example, Fedora 15 does not support systat 7.x

  2. Some of the software requires specific versions of Java

* Asynchronous version of Rubbos benchmark in addition to our tracing infrastructure requires at least Java 7


* Previous versions of the JVM have been shown to introduce performance penalties. As such, an uninstrumented version of the benchmark _**should not**_ be executed with any version prior to Java 6.