[ArborMesh] Arbormesh Hackathon: What needs doing?

[Ryan Hughes]

> does someone already have a host to put up an arbormesh.org (I assume) 
> website?  I can put it here at my house, but my up-speed is 768k, and I 
> saturate that pretty well during the daytime.  I can run jboss, apache, 
> drupal, or whatever else.  I don't know from django, but my web server is 
> running ubuntu, so shouldn't be a problem.  I don't host my own dns, but I 
> can get that done (for free) through my extensive underworld connections.

Yeah, my iheartryan.com server is under my control.  That's one place we 
could put a website.  We can just get the dns for it and zip zap zup. 
I've got root on there, so we can put any (open-source) app on it. 
Whoever is working on the website, we'll go with whatever you're 
comfortable with.  Drupal and wordpress come to mind.  Maybe even rails or 
django.

> I'm up for a clinic, but other commitments (kids, mainly) may make it 
> difficult for me, so it'll depend on when it happens.  I have blocked off the 
> hackathon night, though.

Yeah, I'm not expecting a lot of takers on that.  But I can even meet with 
people individually and get to showing them the ropes.

> re: cronned script to poll for internet connectivity...  what environment is 
> available in openwrt?  I can do bash scripts for that, assuming all the 
> "normal" networking tools are there -- mainly ping, I guess.

Yep, it's got linux and busybox.  Most software you'd put on a linux 
server can also be put on an openwrt box.  It'll have the things you're 
used to.

> I'm also up for luci/lua stuff, mainly since I know jack about it at present, 
> yet wouldn't be outside of my comfort zone.

Excellent.

> fwiw, I have no opinion on the routing protocol.  I guess I lean slightly on 
> the conservative side, i.e., OSLR.  but that's mainly based on my ignorance 
> and not wanting to fight with b/leeding edge stuff. that said, I'm not likely 
> to be that valuable in that arena anyway, so I'd yield to any better informed 
> opinions.

Yeah, it seemed like none of the protocols was extremely better than any 
of the others.  I can talk pros and cons.

--Ryan


> On 04/20/11 22:10, Ryan Hughes wrote:
>> Hi. So I wanted to get the ball rolling on the discussion of what should
>> happen at the ArborMesh hackathon, Friday, May 6.
>> 
>> We could use a website! Also, artwork, logo, and so forth!
>> 
>> There are things to be done on the firmware.
>> 
>> I got openwrt configured to speak OLSR and Batman-adv, both. It uses two
>> different network prefixes (one for each protocol). I was wanting to do
>> that so we could do tests/upgrades on one routing protocol while the
>> other makes the actual network happen. That sort of thing.
>> 
>> One thing that olsr does that batman-adv does not is this: It detects
>> whether the router has access to the internet. If it does, it reports
>> itself as a gateway. It periodically pings a set of hard-coded addresses
>> to test whether it can get to the internet.
>> 
>> I'd like us to implement a cron script that would do the equivalent for
>> batman.
>> 
>> Perhaps, before the hackathon, we should have a little "clinic" on how
>> to work with openwrt, and a more in-depth technical introduction to the
>> routing protocols. I can show you what I've been doing, and we can get
>> y'all up to speed. If anybody would like to attend such a "clinic", tell
>> me and we can arrange a time.
>> 
>> We could also do this type of thing at the hackathon itself. I just
>> thought that if anybody wanted a pre-introduction, they could do a
>> little tinkering before we got there, and then we could get more work
>> done at the hackathon.
>> 
>> I'm gonna try to convert what I've been doing into an "OpenWRT
>> ImageBuilder script". Right now, I've got a .config file and so forth,
>> so you need a full OpenWRT source tree. But an imagebuilder script is a
>> little easier to share and faster to produce.
>> 
>> 
>> Now, in addition to the router firmware, we will probably want a web-app
>> that can do some of the central management tasks. I was thinking we'd
>> use "Nodewatcher" for this purpose. The central management tasks include
>> such things as assigning IP addresses and showing a cool map with our
>> nodes and connections, to brag. Nodewatcher is a django app.
>> http://dev.wlan-si.net/wiki/Podrobnosti/Nodewatcher
>> 
>> Here's a live sample of nodewatcher being run on wlan-slovenia.
>> https://nodes.wlan-si.net/
>> 
>> Nodewatcher needs to be installed and configured for us, but it's also a
>> pretty new software project. Only recently has it gained the ability to
>> operate outside of wlan-slovenia. We will almost certainly have to add
>> features.
>> 
>> 
>> Also, we will probably want to add some stuff to the web-UI that's on
>> each router. This would be done in OpenWRT's "LuCI" environment. LuCI is
>> a web-app framework written in lua that runs on each router.
>> 
>> Some of the things to add: Maybe some kind of "configuration wizard",
>> like what Freifunk has.
>> http://wiki.freifunk.net/Freifunk_Firmware_%28English%29
>> 
>> Also, there is already a luci app to show a visualization of the olsr
>> topology, but I don't think there are any luci apps to deal with batman
>> at all. It'd be nice if we could start one -- at least as a topology
>> visualizer, but also to see other status information and do some
>> configuration, maybe.
>> 
>> 
>> Also, it'd be sweet if we had one of those "welcome screens". Like, when
>> you first log into the network and it's like "You are about to use
>> ArborMesh. Plz to agree to our policies." There are openwrt packages
>> ready to use, but we'd have to configure them, and put our own artwork
>> and info inthere.
>> But this would also be cool if we could use that space to advertise
>> hyperlocal things, like "You are about to use arbormesh. Here's a cool
>> irc channel and mailing list. Y'know what's cool? AHA. And other
>> community organizations and stuff. Oh, and look: These are some network
>> services being run on the inside of the network! Check out this website
>> without even going down to the copper at all!".
>> 
>> We could come up with some sort of broadcast mechanism that we could use
>> to push out changes to the welcome page.
>> 
>> 
>> This is my brainstorm. Anybody else got any ideas? List 'em, here. When
>> we get to the hackathon, we can prioritize.
>> --Ryan
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