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Orxonox Infrastructure

This section describes the infrastructure used for the development on our project Orxonox. The information include location and explanation of our orxonox services.

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Table of Contents

  1. Overview
  2. Orxonox Server Information
    1. Server Location
    2. Server System
    3. Apache
    4. MySQL
    5. Postfix
    6. SSH
    7. BIND
  3. DNS
    1. orxonox.net domain
    2. orxonox.ethz.ch domain
  4. Mailing
    1. Mailman
    2. Postfix mail accounts
    3. MySQL mail mappings
  5. Webpage
    1. News tracker
    2. Awstats
    3. Webpage repository
    4. Webpage editing
  6. Subversion
    1. User management
    2. Repositories
  7. External Orxonox Sites
    1. Sourceforge
    2. SDL

Overview

Go to nautilus2 for information about our vseth virtual machine server.

Orxonox Server Information

Server Location

The Orxonox server is located in the VSETH server room. This room can be found in the ETHZ CAB building but is not direclty accessible by us, since we do not have a key. The network administrator from the VSETH is responsable for this server. This responsability is delegated to us Orxonox developers.
The server can be accessed via different network addresses: nautilus.vseth.ethz.ch, www.orxonox.ethz.ch, orxonox.net

  • Interfaces:
    • VSETH Informatik Vorstand

Server System

The orxonox server is a old AMD 700MHz system with 512MB RAM and a segate harddisk (since august 2006). A gentoo system runs on this setup. Following services are installed and running on the server:

  • Apache - webserver
  • Postifx - mailserver
  • SSH - the remote login server
  • Bind - our DNS server

Apache

Our apache server has built in support for PHP5, WebDAV (for subversion), CGI and SSL. The configuration files can be found in: 

/etc/apache2/

There are two different main configuration file types:
Server configuration Namely the /etc/apache2/httpd.conf files. Contain information about the server itself (name, properties and settings)
Virtual Web Zones Namely the /etc/apache2/vhosts.d/ directory and all files contained in them. These files describe the virtual domains (webserver addresses different from the server name) like admin.orxonox.net or dev.orxonox.net.
Webpage Directories You will find the webpage data and content in the files pointed to from the /etc/apache2/vhosts.d configuration files.
apache is installed using  this tutorial.

MySQL

With Apache we have installed also MySQL server. Std. installation using the apache instruction manual.

Postfix

Postfix is our mailserver, we use the courier imap package. We used  this installation guide. Additional help can be got from  postfix faq.

SSH

Only public/private key athentication.

BIND

Standard installation. Our domain server handles the orxonox.net zone and ist first and only domain server for this zone. Zones can be found under /var/bind/

DNS

Orxonox is reacheable under two different subdomains: orxonox.ethz.ch and oroxnox.net

orxonox.net domain

Benjamin and Patrick did buy the orxonox.net domain 2004 for 5 years. Registration runs under the name of Benjamin Grauer.

  • dev.orxonox.net - development page: trac wiki
  • doc.oroxnox.net - doxygen documentation of orxonox
  • admin.orxonox.net - administration interface, password protected
  • svn.orxonox.net - subversion repository, public and private entries
  • mail.orxonox.net - mail server
  • forum.orxonox.net - our php-mysql oroxnox forum
  • www.orxonox.net - the orxonox webpage

orxonox.ethz.ch domain

This dns tables are administrated by the vseth informatik vorstand. We have following subdaomeins:

  • www.orxonox.ethz.ch - the webserver not used anymore
  • svn.oroxnox.ethz.ch - the subversion not used anymore
  • orxonox.ethz.ch - the mail server

Mailing

Mailman

You will want to access the mailman through  https://admin.orxonox.net/ (user/password of the subversion login - only for admin users). The  mailman page gives you a short overview about all available mailing lists and gives you also an administrative interface to the mailinglist. For more information about mailman useage visit  the mailman documentation. Creating new mailing lists can only be done via ssh.

Postfix mail accounts

Postfix is our mailserver, accounts need to be created via ssh login. Forwards and aliases can be defined within the web gui (see next section). Creating a new user account (only as root): 

# create the user and create home-dir
useradd -m user_name
# set the password for the user
passwd user_name
# now create the maildir directory for the new user
cd /home/user_name
mkdir .maildir
chown user_name:users .maildir
chmod 700 .maildir

Now send an email to this new account so the postfix server creates and initializes all subdirs automatically.

MySQL mail mappings

A MySQL database containing Orxonox mail aliases. You will want to access the gui via  https://admin.orxonox.net/. On the  phpmyadmin gui select the mailsql database. orxonox_alias and virtual_orxonox are the most interessting tables.

Webpage

http(s) website of the Orxonox project.

News tracker

A system to create and manage news entries on the Orxonox frontpage. You will want to access this page also over  https://admin.orxonox.net/. From there select phpnews and you will be redirected to the phpnew admin site. Here you will be asked again for user/pass (request a user/pass tuple from orxonox [at] oroxonox.net if you want some). From here you can create/modify any news postings from Orxonox.
ATTENTION If you create a new article, don't fill out the Title Text since it will be ommited (but write sometihng unuseable in it or it won't be accepted. This is nasty I know). Instead only use the subject and News Body. Try to redirect the text to the orxonox forum (form.orxonox.net) so other users will be able to rely to this news very easily. You can do this by adding something like this: 

<a href="https://forum.orxonox.net/viewtopic.php?t=102">More</a>

Awstats

An automated service that parses apache logs and creates statistics from it. You can check this out over the main admin site:  https://admin.orxonox.net/. Where you will select the awstats link and end up [here  https://admin.orxonox.net/awstats/awstats.pl].

Webpage repository

The orxonox webpage is kept in a separate subversion. You can check it out via subversion with  http://svn.orxonox.net/webdev/webpage/ (anonymous) or  https://svn.orxonox.net/webdev/webpage/ (with svn user/pass - to be able to commit). You can also browse it via web-browser: point it to  http://svn.orxonox.net/webdev/webpage/.[[br]]

Webpage editing

ATTENTION To work on the webpage: check out the repository and make your changes. Then commit the code as you are used to (svn ci -m "some message"). On the server the page will automicelly be updated (2-5 secs after the commit). If it doesn't you can login to the server, change to the /var/www/www.orxonox.net change your user to orxonox su orxonox and perform a manual update (svn up ).

Subversion

User management

Adding and removing users, permission settings all over ssh. So logon to our server (eg. ssh user@orxonox.net and change to the /var/svn/ directory, there you will find two very important files:

  • svnuser - the users that are able to access the repository with their passwords as md5 hashes. to add a new user: htpasswd2 -m ./svnusers test (you have to be root to do this)
  • svnaccess - the file including different access groups. for each subversion directory a group can be specified having access to it.

Repositories

  • orxonox/ - the orxonox source repository (the c++ source of the trunk/branches)
  • data/ - the orxonox data repository (models, textures, worlds, etc.)
  • webdev/ - the Orxonox webpage, PPS material and some libraries
  • orxonox_closed/ - Orxonox semester thesis from Patrick Boenzli and Benjamin Grauer

External Orxonox Sites

We have some sites accounts on other sites refering to orxonox.

Sourceforge

Orxonox is as [www.sourceforge.org sourceforge] project. You find the page  here. Patrick Boenzli is the owner of the project at sourceforge.

SDL