Abstract
Introduction

Demos
LiveCam in the Lab

Developers
DocumentTree Live
AM-Mailing list
Prototypes

On this site
This web server
How to write VL Docs

The VLAM-G web server how-to

The transitional web server for the VLAM-G and DutchGrid project is hosted by NIKHEF on the machine kilogram.nikhef.nl. This system, a SUN Ultra 60 model 2450, runs the Apache 1.3.12 http daemon with Ben Lauries SSL patches. It is configured to support various virtual hosts using the HTTP/1.1 host alias protocol, but only one SSL-secured host per IP address is allowed in such a scheme. The hosts operating system is Solaris 8.

The DutchGrid and VLAM-G Hosts

vlabwww.nikhef.nl: Main entrypoint for interested individuals, both for the DutchGrid and the VLAM-G projects. There are four main subtrees defined, that can be publicly accessed in a coordinated way: /DutchGrid, /WCWgrid, /NikhefCA and /VLAM-G. When loaded, the index.html files in these sub-trees will create the neccessary frameset and show the relevant sub-part of the vlabwww site.
certificate.nikhef.nl: Secure or security-related information for the DutchGrid and Virtual Lab projects. The main page at http://certificate.nikhef.nl/ gives information on the NIKHEF/DutchGrid Certification Authority. The secure part of the web site https://certificate.nikhef.nl/ initially refers you back to the unprotected pages, but various sub-trees (/cgi-bin/ and /servlets/) can be used to provide SSL secured entry-points. On request, access control using the FakeBasicAuth capability of Apache-SSL can be provided.
kilogram.nikhef.nl: This is a pure testing host and should not be referenced from any project. However, it is useful to pre-test pages and scripts before moving them to a public location.

The content of all these sites is taken from from several directories below /project/srv/www/share/site/. There is one directory per `main' tree, named after the site's host alias:

http://vlabwww.nikhef.nl/	/project/srv/www/share/site/vlabwww/
http://vlabwww.nikhef.nl/cgi-bin/	/project/srv/www/share/site/vlabwww-cgi/
http://vlabwww.nikhef.nl/servlets/	/project/srv/www/share/site/vlabwww-tomcat/servlets/
http://certificate.nikhef.nl/	/project/srv/www/share/site/certificate/
https://certificate.nikhef.nl/	/project/srv/www/share/site/certificate-secure/

^{Please complete this table yourself}

Directory Organization

THIS INFORMATION IS NOW OUTDATED!
The web site index (the left-hand frame) is generated automatically using dedicated directory naming conventions. The key points are:

Only directories with names starting with a capital latter are shown in the menu.
Any digits preceeding the indexed name are removed from the full name (only when separated from this full name by an underscore).
Directory names should not contain spaces. Any underscore will be replaces by a space in the displpayed name automatically.
The directory name should not contain colons and quotes.
Nesting directories will work, but requires special actions in the navigation bar directory: additional menu bar pieces will have to be made and stored in the /images directory. This directory is only writeable by the web master. Also, the user will experience lack of navigation capabilities, since the mail menu will not be visible anymore (but see the MacsLab entry for an example).
In order to make sub-parts of the web site easily accessible from elsewhere, you can add symbolic links to the capitalised and numbered directories. These links should have lower-case starting letters and will this not be indexed by the MkMenu script. See the DutchGrid/wp4 directory for an example.

You can volunteer to maintain a section of this website by sending mail to gridadm@nikhef.nl. You can also put up cgi-bin scripts and Java servlets on both the vlabwww and secure certificate web areas. In these cases, contact the Grid administrator directly to have the security aspects of your application reviewed. You should also contact the grid admin if you want to use either SSL or BasicAuth authorization for certain areas.

Automatic content

During the night, some parts of this web site are automatically refreshed. On host kilogram, user "gridadm" runs three nightly cron jobs:

19 2 * * *      /user/gridadm/bin/update_cert
19 7 * * *      /user/gridadm/bin/update_mhonarc
19 6 * * *      /user/gridadm/bin/update_vldocs

The update_cert job checks the certificates directory of globus (/global/globus/share/certificates), updates the CRLs and verifies the integrity of certs and CRLs.
update_mhonarc parses the mai logs of the vlam-g mailing lists and rewrites the appropriate web pages.
The DocumentsLive page is taken daily fro the CVS tree by the update_vldocs script. Only the "vlam" module from the cvs tree is checked.

Starting and stopping

The websites are hosted on kilogram.nikhef.nl. At boot time, the script /opt/apache-ssl/bin/vlwebstart is run at the transition to runlevel 3. This script, to be run by root at all times, can take any of three possible arguments: start, stop and restart. It will startup the tomcat/Java server as user `griduser', and start the apache-ssl webserver initially as root (the daemons will later run as `griduser').

Comments to David Groep