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Tutorial >> The Remote Laboratory Interface

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RLI Basics

Before beginning our tour of the RLI, let's go over some basic conventions regarding mouse buttons. The following list is a quick summary of the main features:

• Menus are accessible by single clicking with the left mouse button.
• Objects that have not been allocated have a light blue color.
• Allocated objects have a dark blue color.
• At all times, hosts and NSPs have logical names (e.g., host n1p3, NSP1). After resource allocation, hosts and NSPs also have actual resource names. For example, onl20.arl.wustl.edu might be the actual n1p3 host. onl01.arl.wustl.edu might be the CP for NSP1.
• Clicking the center of a dark blue icon (allocated object) shows the the actual object's name. In the case of a host, the logical name (e.g., n1p2) refers to the network interface to the NSP network and the actual name (e.g., onl21.arl.wustl.edu) refers to the network interface to the external network (an Ethernet). Alternatively, you can use an environment variable like $n1p2 to refer to the external interface. See below for more details.
• A single object can be moved to a different part of the window by holding the left mouse button down on the icon and dragging. Components that are close to each other can be moved as a group by dragging a box over the objects to select the objects and then holding the left mouse button down on one of the host icons and dragging.
• A property list or menu can be hidden by clicking any open area in the RLI window.
• After configuration changes have been made, the changes must be committed by selecting File => Commit. The status box at the bottom of the main display will be outlined in red to remind you that changes have been made and need to be committed before they are actually reflected in the testbed.

The /users/onl/.topology File

Throughout the descriptions, interface names that begin with a dollar sign (e.g., $n1p2, $n2p3, $n3p1a) refer to the Ethernet interface that is connected to the control network. Every host has two interfaces: one connected to the internal (private) testbed network and one connected to the external (control) network. Experimental traffic goes over the internal network consisting of your NSPs and the interconnection switch. A user can SSH to onl.arl.wustl.edu (called the login host) at any time but can only SSH into other ONL hosts that have been given to the user as part of the commit process. Control messages and SSH access to a committed ONL host from the login host go over the external (control) network. Interfaces to the internal network have IP addresses of the form 192.168.N.H where N is the NSP number and H is the host portion and have names such as n1p2, n2p3 and n3p1a (note no dollar sign). Interfaces to the external (control) network have IP addresses of the form 10.0.0.H where H is the host portion and have names such as onl21.arl.wustl.edu (which has the short name onl21). These external names are determined during the commit phase when actual resources are bound to resources in your configuration.

In many cases (especially scripts), it might be easier to refer to the environment variable (e.g., $n1p2) associated with the external interface. These variables can be imported into your environment by running one of these two commands:

     source ~onl/.topology		# bash
     source ~onl/.topology.csh		# csh

     printenv n1p2
     echo "$n1p2"

Tutorial >> The Remote Laboratory Interface	TOC