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.. IVLE - Informatics Virtual Learning Environment
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Copyright (C) 2007-2009 The University of Melbourne
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.. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
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it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
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the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
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(at your option) any later version.
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.. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
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but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
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MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
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GNU General Public License for more details.
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.. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
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along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
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Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
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IVLE is a complex piece of software that integrates closely with the
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underlying system. It can be considered part web service and part local system
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daemon. Due to the implementation of these parts it is tied to Apache Web
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Server (mainly due to the use of mod_python) and Linux.
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IVLE uses mod_python_ to allow Python scripts to be called from Apache. We
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register the :mod:`ivle.dispatch` module as the ``PythonHandler`` in the
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associated VirtualHost, allowing us to intercept all HTTP requests to the web
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The :mod:`ivle.dispatch` module is responsible for mapping requests from the
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client to the correct application plugin. Plugins can be specified by placing
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a :file:`*.conf` file into the :file:`/etc/ivle/plugins.d/` directory
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containing lines of the form :samp:`[{plugin_module}#{classname}]`.
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.. TODO: Document Plugin Format and Routing Strings
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In future, this may be ported to a WSGI (:pep:`333`) based dispatch to allow
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IVLE to be run on web servers other than Apache.
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.. _mod_python: http://www.modpython.org/
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IVLE uses the Genshi_ XHTML template system to generate all HTML pages. We
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have an inheritance-based "views" system. :class:`BaseView` is a class from
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which all views derive.
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There are 3 sub-types of :class:`BaseView` (more can be implemented if
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* browser, console, debuginfo, diff, forum, groups, help, home, logout,
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settings, subjects, svnlog, tos, tutorial
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* consoleservice, fileservice, tutorialservice, userservice
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The apps each derive from one of the above.
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IVLE used to write its HTML output as a raw stream to an output file, until
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it was refactored to use Genshi. All apps which haven't yet been refactored
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properly were ported to use the "raw byte streaming" view.
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.. _Genshi: http://genshi.edgewall.org/
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One of the main features of IVLE is it's ability to execute user's code in a
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customised environment that prevents access to other users files or underlying
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file system as well as placing basic resource limits to prevent users from
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accidentally exhausting shared resources such as CPU time and memory.
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To each user, it appears that they have their own private Unix filesystem
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containing software, libraries and a home directory to do with what they
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please. This is mainly done by the setuid root program ``trampoline`` (See
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:file:`bin/trampoline/trampoline.c`) which mounts the users home directory,
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sets up the users environment, jumps into the user's jail using the
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:manpage:`chroot(2)` system call and finally drops privileges to the desired
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To prevent abuse, ``trampoline`` can only be used by root or one of the uids
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specified when trampoline is built by ``setup.py build`` (defaults to UID 33,
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www-data on Debian systems). Since it's one of two C programs involved in IVLE
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and runs setuid root it is rather secuity sensative.
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Base Image Generation
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---------------------
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All user jails share a common base image that contains the files required for
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both IVLE's operation and for executing user code. This base image is
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generated automatically by the ``ivle-buildjail`` script. This then calls the
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distribution dependant details in :mod:`ivle.jailbuilder` module. At present
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we only support building jails for Debian derived systems using
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:program:`debootstrap`.
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The contents of the base image contains a few core packages required for the
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operation of IVLE - Python and the Python CJSON and SVN libraries. Other
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options that can be configured in :file:`/etc/ivle/ivle.conf` are the file
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mirror that debootstrap should use, the suite to build (such as hardy or
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jaunty), extra apt-sources, extra apt keys and any additional packages to
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To prevent users from altering files in the base image we change the
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permissions of :file:`/tmp`, :file:`/var/tmp` and :file:`/var/lock` to not be
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world writeable and check that no other files are world writeable.
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Finally we make the user dependent :file:`/etc/passwd` and
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:file:`/etc/ivle/ivle.conf` symlinks to files in the :file:`/home` directory
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so that they will be used when we mount a user's home directory.
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Mounting Home Directories
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-------------------------
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To give the appearance of a private file system we need to merge together a
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user's local home directory with the base image.
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To achieve this, IVLE uses the *bind mount* feature of Linux, which allows
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directories to be accessible from another location in the
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file system. By carefully read-only bind mounting the jail image and then bind
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mounting the user's :file:`/home` and :file:`/tmp` directory data over the top
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we can create a jail with only three bind mounts and at virtually no
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IVLE has historically used numerous solutions to this problem, which are
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chronicled here to avoid the same mistakes being made again.
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In the first release of IVLE this was done off-line by hardlinking all the
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files into the target directory, but for more than a handful of users this
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process could take several hours and also ran the risk of exhausting inodes
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on the underlying file system.
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The first solution was to use `AUFS <http://aufs.sourceforge.net/>`_ to
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mount the user's home directory over a read-only version of the base on
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demand. This was implemented as part of ``trampoline`` and used a secondary
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program ``timount`` (see :file:`bin/timount/timount.c`) run at regular
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intervals to unmount unused jails. This uses the :const:`MNT_EXPIRE` flag
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for :manpage:`umount(2)` (available since Linux 2.6.8) that only unmounts a
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directory if it hasn't been accessed since the previous call with
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While quite effective, AUFS appears to cause NFS caching issues when IVLE
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is run as a cluster as well as questionable inclusion status in newer
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distributions. This is why the current system uses the much older bind
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mount feature to achieve the same ends.
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Before running the specified program in the users jail we need to
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:manpage:`chroot(2)` into the users jail and update the processes environment
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so that we have the correct environment variables and user/group ids.
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At this stage we also may apply a number of resource limits (see
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:manpage:`setrlimit`) to prevent run away processes (such as those containing
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infinite loops or "fork bombs") from exhausting all system resources. The
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default limits are on maximum address space (:const:`RLIMIT_AS`), process data
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space (:const:`RLIMIT_DATA`), core dump size (:const:`RLIMIT_CORE`), CPU time
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(:const:`RLIMIT_CPU`), file size (:const:`RLIMIT_FSIZE`) and number of
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processes that may be spawned (:const:`RLIMIT_NPROC`).
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Unfortunately due to glibc's :manpage:`malloc(2)` implementation being able to
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allocate memory using :manpage:`mmap(2)`, :const:`RLIMIT_DATA` does not
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provide an effective limit on the amount of memory that a process can allocate
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(short of applying a kernel patch). Thus the only way to limit memory
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allocations is by placing limits on the address space, but this can cause
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problems with certain applications that allocate far larger address spaces
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than the real memory used. For this reason :const:`RLIMIT_AS` is currently set
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IVLE provides a web based programming console, exposing similar features to
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Python's command line console. It is built around python script
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:file:`services/python-console` which opens up a socket to which `JSON`_
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encoded chat requests can be made. A new console is typically from launched on
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demand by the web client to the HTTP API, which in turn calls the wrapper
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class :class:`ivle.console.Console` to start a new console in the user's jail.
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.. _JSON: http://json.org
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User Management Server
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======================
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The **User Management Server** is a daemon responsible for handling privileged
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actions on IVLE and should be launched along with IVLE. It is primarily
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* Creating user jails, Subversion repositories, and Subversion authentication
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* Creating group Subversion repositories.
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* Rebuilding Subversion authorization files.
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Communication with the Server is done using the `Chat Protocol`_. To prevent
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unauthorized use, communication with the User Management Server requires that
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a *shared secret* be used to communicate with the server. This secret is
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stored in the `magic` variable in the `[usrmgt]` section of
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:file:`/etc/ivle/ivle.conf`.
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The User Management Server is called almost exclusively from the
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:mod:`ivle.webapp.userservice` module.
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See :file:`services/usrmgt-server` for details.
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**Chat** is our JSON_-based client/server communication protocol used in
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communicating to `Python Console`_ processes and `User Management Server`_.
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Since it is JSON-based it can be called from either Python or JavaScript.
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The protocol is a fairly simple client/server based one consisting of a single
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JSON object. Before communication starts a shared secret :const:`MAGIC` must
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be known by both parties. The shared secret is then used to form a
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'keyed-Hash Message Authentication Code' to ensure that the content is valid
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and not been modified in transit.
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The client request takes the following form::
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where :const:`DATA` is any valid JSON value and :const:`HASH` is an string
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containing the MD5 hash of the :const:`DATA` appended to :const:`MAGIC` and
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The server will respond with a JSON value corresponding to the request.
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If an error occurs then a special JSON object will be returned of the
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"traceback": TRACEBACK
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where :const:`NAME` is a JSON string of the exception type (such as
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'AttributeError'), :const:`VALUE` is the string value associated with the
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exception and :const:`TRACEBACK` is a string of the traceback generated by the
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server's exception handler.
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See :file:`ivle/chat.py` for details.
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.. TODO: Not yet merged
added
removed
doc/dev/architecture.rst
