Web interface for configuration/monitoring at runtime?

[smoe]

I am co-maintainer of the BOINC package that ships with 21.02. The package was very much prepared with gluon in mind, just, well, configuring BOINC from the command line is not so very intuitive. So, @n30dg also prepared a web interface for it that is really nice with OpenWrt, but how could anything like that to run with Gluon?

We cannot just extend the status page since there is no access control.

[rotanid]

something like this has been discussed before, see for example #2171 - maybe there were earlier requests i just can't find atm

[smoe]

Thank you for that pointer, @rotanid. What I take from this is that I should not address this for the moment. Maybe I should indeed just prepare something independent from the config pages to add to the status page, so a Gluon node could be inspected by everyone on the progress it has made on whatever BOINC project. I need to think a bit more about what I want BOINC on routers to be and how this forges with what Freifunk is doing.

[T-X]

BOINC projects are usually public research projects, right? Then I think it would be awesome if you could have a look at the map and see how many nodes are also sponsoring CPU resources next to network resources for the commons. And could then go into further details about the BOINC project a node is working on in particular via its (or another) public status page.

That way both projects could benefit from each other?

Configuration interface accessible during runtime might need additional thoughts though, maybe. We currently do not have a secure way to access a config mode via a web interface other than physical security, as there is no https available right now.

[smoe]

BOINC projects are usually public research projects, right?

Yes.

Then I think it would be awesome if you could have a look at the map and see how many nodes are also sponsoring CPU resources next to network resources for the commons. And could then go into further details about the BOINC project a node is working on in particular via its (or another) public status page.

This would turn a Freifunk community into a scientific crunching community. I tend to like that.

That way both projects could benefit from each other?

Configuration interface accessible during runtime might need additional thoughts though, maybe. We currently do not have a secure way to access a config mode via a web interface other than physical security, as there is no https available right now.

Leaving configuration issues aside, I would like to show on the status page

• if boinc is installed
• how much disk space is on /opt/boinc
• the temperature of CPU
• how many work units of which projects are running to what level of completion

I am a bit uncertain though how to get there. Maybe you all could guide me a little. From what I recall from my last look at the status page, that page displays information from respondd. If this is forwarded to the maps then it would be upon the maintainer of the respective map server to find a way to display such extranous data.

My concern is that yet we are completely blank wrt any such extensions. It does not need to be BOINC credits to show but e.g. environmental sensor data that we would want to show. And there is no way that any map could prepare for them all.

Another question to ask is about security. If you know that a router regularly exchanges packages with a particular machine on the internet then you can possibly intercept these packages while these pass your meshing router and substitute them with something nasty. There may still be projects that use http for some parts of their communication. Also, the sole notion of extra plenty disk space in /opt/boinc may provoke the one or other attack. I am not sure, really.

If you have an idea for a small piloting extension of what is available today to generate something to abstract from - please kindly direct me.

[smoe]

The boinc 7.16.16 package transitioned to 19.07 (stable, soon old-stable) about two weeks ago. Would there be someone out there to mentor me on how I could come up with a gluon package that would extend the status page with a few lines on the BOINC status? Would that need to go through respondd? Should there possibly be an abstraction from the current page (say with the introduction of tabs, one tab for each extra module?) since otherwise this would be too crowded on a single page?

Many thanks!