The Lab.pm provisioning module is used to broker access to standalone pre-installed Linux or Solaris machines. These machines could be in an existing walk-in computer lab or racked in a server room. VCL does not install these nodes. It controls which user is allowed to remotely connect to the node during a given time period.

There are four main parts needed to setup a standalone machine to use with the Lab.pm module.

1. a non-root account called vclstaff on the target machines
2. ssh idenitity key for vclstaff account, this key is used by the vcld process on the management node
3. ssh service running on port 24 of the target machines
4. vclclientd running on the target machines, vclclientd in the bin directory of the vcld release

For distribution to a large set of machines, an rpm or package could be created to distribute vclclientd and related files.

How it works.

The Lab.pm module confirms an assigned node or lab machine is accessible using the ssh identity key on port 24. If this succeeds, then a small configuration file with the state, user's id and the users' remote IP address is sent to the node along with a flag to trigger the vclclientd process to either open or close the remote access port. Currently this module only supports Linux and Solaris lab machines.

How to setup:

All commands are run as root.

...

INSERT INTO `vcl`.`image`
(`id` ,
`name` ,
`prettyname` ,
`ownerid` ,
`platformid` ,
`OSid` ,
`imagemetaid` ,
`minram` ,
`minprocnumber` ,
`minprocspeed` ,
`minnetwork` ,
`maxconcurrent` ,
`reloadtime` ,
`deleted` ,
`test` ,
`lastupdate` ,
`forcheckout` ,
`maxinitialtime` ,
`project` ,
`size` ,
`architecture` ,
`description` ,
`usage` ,
`basedoffrevisionid`)
VALUES
('8' , 'lab-machine-image1', 'Lab Machine image', '1', '1', '1522', NULL,
'512', '1', '1024', '100', NULL , '5', '0', '0', NOW(), '1', '0', 'vcl', '1500',
'x86', NULL , NULL , '0'NULL
);

Insert information into the imagerevision table. Note 'Lab Machine image' can be what ever you want.

...