ACD Access Grid Notes and Resources


Notes for Tim Fredrick, Updated 28-Oct-03

The Open Source Access Grid

It has seemed to me as I have read so far that you should be able to download and install access grid client software to join existing Venues. Here are some of the steps I followed:
  1. Went to \ http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/fl/research/accessgrid/ which is an ANL page announcing Access Grid Toolkit 2.1.2. I downloaded the Windows XP version of it from here which consists of three components -- Active State Python 2.2, the toolkit itself (AGTk 2.0), and wxPythonWIN32. All must be installed as per the instructions on their respective web pages.
  2. Launched the Access Grid client. The first thing it did was request a Certificate using a dialog box.
  3. I followed the steps required to request a certificate by clicking through these dialog boxes. It takes a couple or a few days to get a certificate. In the meantime, the client software will complain at startup time:
    .
    I went ahead and started the client software anyway.
  4. The certificate, by the way, is stored in a file called "userkey.pem" and that goes along with "usercert.pem" goes into your C:\Documents and Settings\ username\Application Data\globus menu.
  5. The next step is creating your access grid client profile. This is information which is displayed about you in the access grid venues.
  6. I plugged in the Firewire camera (and Windows XP plug and play detected it).
  7. I started the venue client. But there wasn't much I could do from here because of the lack of a certificate.
The certificate arrived by mail the next day. The message says:
Your certificate request to the AG Developers CA has been approved and your certificate is ready. You can retrieve this certificate automatically by running the Venues Client and picking View Pending requests from the Preferences->Manage Certificates Menu.
So I started the Venues Client and picked "View Pending Requests" as directed in the email message:
  1. There is a "View certificate status" screen that looks like this:
  2. I highlighted the certificate's distinguished name "/O=Access Grid..." and clicked "Import Certificate". I was then asked for the pass phrase which I used when making the certificate request earlier:

    Once the pass phrase was entered correctly, I got an "Import Successful" dialog box. I then clicked OK.
  3. I clicked "Close" in the "View certificates status" screen and then got my venue client screen:
  4. I selected "Go to home venue" from the "My Venues" pull-down menu and got these screens:
      
  5. In the field "rtpEmail:" I entered my email address and clicked "Accept".
  6. I then saw the "Access Grid Lobby" This is a window that can be resized but not scrolled. Some of the screens corresponding to remote nodes run off the bottom and are not viewable.
  7. Clicking on one of the screens brings it up:

    and just as with the Insors system we have, pressing l, m, and s makes the window large, medium, and small respectively. These windows are not resizable in the traditional windows way.
As a final experiment, I joined the ACD Council Room (Insors system) to the ANL default menu, and also joined my PC to ANL default menu. I was able to bring up an image. I then set up a notebook PC in the Council room playing RealAudio (KingFM) and was able to hear the PC from my office. (!) I don't have control over the camera this way but audio and video do seem to work. I have not yet figured out how to project video to the ACD Council Room from my office.

To do...

Now I can connect to the ANL default venue. But of course what we really want to be able to do is connect to one of the UCAR venues, or to create a venue for ACD to which we can connect.

Glossary

Resources