• 1. Where to find resources
  • slides
  • tutorials
• 2. Reservations - accounts - ssh keys
  • how to get an account
  • we will all use inria_school
  • rain check
• 3. Notes on using notebooks or IPython
  • notebooks vs regular python
  • jupyter classic vs jupyter lab
  • Important note about tornado v5
    • checking
    • fixing
  • inserting livemap in a notebook
• Known issues
  • livemap not animated
  • python3 and pip3
    • checking

1. Where to find resources

slides

Check out

• our demos github repo https://github.com/fit-r2lab/r2lab-demos
• and specifically in the school subdir

tutorials

Also remember to use the R2lab website https://r2lab.inria.fr

• in particular an extensive set of tutorials on the TUTOS page
• in everyday life the most useful page is the RUN page

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2. Reservations - accounts - ssh keys

how to get an account

• register for an account

  • fill the form at https://r2labapi.inria.fr/db/persons/register.php
  • make sure to choose site inria
  • also please make sure to use an institutional email address (e.g. avoid gmail.com)
  • expect a first confirmation e-mail and click on the link

• someone will validate your application

• once this is OK, log into https://r2lab.inria.fr/run.md and

  • upload your ssh key (click the slices and keys area)
  • and check that you see the inria_school slice in the area marked drag & drop to book
  • otherwise send an e-mail requesting to be made part of that slice
  • log out and back in if necessary, until you can see that slice show up

we will all use inria_school

• testbed is normally designed to be reserved as a whole

  • so we will use a single slice named inria_school

rain check

Using your ssh key, you should be able to enter the testbed gateway:

ssh inria_school@faraday.inria.fr

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3. Notes on using notebooks or IPython

notebooks vs regular python

We will use notebooks during the hands-on sessions, because this format allows for interactive python coding, together with online graphs, and nice layouts.

This is * not at all mandatory*, please use your usual python environment if you feel more comfortable with that.

IPython is a quite decent alternative, again pick what you are most comfortable with, today's topic is the testbed and related tools, not your python environment.

jupyter classic vs jupyter lab

We will use jupyter classic, primarily because the RISE nbextension (that allows to turn a notebook into a slideshow) is not yet supported under jupyterlab.

We are also aware of some other limitations currently present under jupyterlab, so unless you know what you're doing it's probably best to stick with the classic notebook.

Important note about tornado v5

Important note if you plan on using notebooks.

With the recent rollout of tornado-5, as of end of march 2018, it is currently not possible to run anything relying on an asyncio event loop from a notebook if you have tornado v5 installed.

checking

pip3 freeze | grep tornado

fixing

if the above command shows you a version 5.x, then you can work around the problem by issuing

pip3 install tornado==4.5.3

and then restart your python kernel.

For more details on this issue, see https://github.com/jupyter/notebook/issues/3397

inserting livemap in a notebook

Copy this code in a cell

from IPython.display import IFrame
IFrame('https://r2lab.inria.fr/iframe.md', height=380, width='100%')

Known issues

livemap not animated

Some pages in the website, like primarily the RUN page show a live status of the testbed. During the first session, some participants could not see this animation, for them the testbed remains blank.

This is due to the live traffic about the testbed being broadcast through websockets on port 999, that apparently is filtered for some participants.

This is not critical for the tutorial session, so unless you can work around the filtering by enabling a VPN or swapping to another network, just live with that :)

python3 and pip3

Some people also ran into trouble for installing apssh through pip3.

checking

$ type python3
python3 is /usr/local/bin/python3
$ type pip3
pip3 is /usr/local/bin/pip3

If the 2 commands point at different locations, then chances are that pip3 is installing stuff for some other python3 that the one that you are using.

If everything goes well you should see this:

$ python3 -c 'import apssh; print(apssh.__version__)'
0.9.4

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This section probably won't be useful.

Node groups

This is needed because we all share the same slice.

Note. The actual group nodes will be defined on the spot

colored map

We need to split the nodes in several groups to implement some kind of light isolation.