NTAF Installation

This document is designed to help you with the basic installation of NTAF and its uderlying components. Due to the evolving nature of NTAF, no claim or guarantee is made to the reliability and proper functionality on your system. A best effort has been made to make NTAF as reiable as possible.

In order to get NTAF up and running on your host, there are a few underlying Python modules that need installation. It is recommended that you try and maintain their default installation locations. I.e., /usr/local/lib/python2.2/site-packages. Or wherever your python installation is located.
You may install the packages local to your home directory or elsewhere on the system, but be sure and update the PYTHONPATH environment variable to point to this alternate location as well.

REQUIREMENTS:

Python2.2
NetLogger
ZSI-1.2
4Suite-0.12.0a3
PyXML-0.6.6
PyGMA-0.1

Python2.2 is available at www.python.org. Earlier python2.X versions may work. Python2.2x and later versions will work.
NetLogger is a distributed logging system that allows harnessed programs to send specialized log information to remote locations. NTAF uses NetLogger for both internal and external communication. NetLogger MUST be installed correctly to have NTAF operate. The current version is available at http://www-didc.lbl.gov/NetLogger If you have an earlier version, do not use it. Install the latest version.

What follows are python/C packages that implement the RPC interface into NTAF. These must be installed in the order listed above; PyGMA will not build and install properly if it cannot find components offered by PyXML, etc... If you have more current releases of these packages installed, The RPC feature may not operate as designed.
Future NTAF releases may implement rpc with a different structure. This will not affect the base operation of NTAF.

PyGMA-0.1 A Pythonic Grid monitoring architecture interface. This is included with the NTAF distribution.
ZSI-1.2 The Zolera Soap Interface. This is included with the NTAF distribution.
PyXML-0.6.6 An XML toolset for python. This is included with the NTAF distribution.
4Suite-0.12.0a3 A DOM and parsing infrastructure used by all the above. This is included with the distribution.

To run NTAF as a simple test scheduling and result recording service, only Python and NetLogger needs to be installed. Access to the recorded results is left as an exercise for the reader. Read the Operational Doc for more insight on how to do this.

Once installation is complete, you will need to edit the NTAF.cfg file to tell the scheduler what tests to run. A working Ping test class has been provided as a both a verification of proper NTAF operation, as well as a reference to help you writting proper tests.
An in-depth treatment of this topic can be found in the README.tests with some theoretical discussion in the Operational Doc.

The README.config will show you how to write proper config entries to get your new tests running & recording.

BUG REPORTS:

As always something will come up that we have overlooked. Since python dumps its errors in a nice(?) traceback format, sending this and a general description of the system environment will go far in helping us track down the problem.
If you are having a problem with getting a new test to run, first try and see if it will run outside of NTAF. Design considerations have been made to separate out the test logic from NTAF control.

All reports can be sent to Martin Stoufer ( MCStoufer@lbl.gov )