This will install SReview in a way that is useful for a small conference. That is, you expect to have no more than a handful of talks.
sreview-web
service on port 8080, listening only to
localhost. The sreview-web package also ships with an apache
configuration snippet that shows how to proxy it from the interwebs.
This is enabled by default, but may require an SSL configuration.sreview-config --action=dump
. This will show you the current
configuration of SReview. If you want to change something, either edit
/etc/sreview/config.pm
, or use sreview-config --set=variable=value
--action=update
.sreview-user -d --action=create -u <your email>
. This will
create an administrator user in the SReview database.schedule_format
configuration option to one of the supported
formats. They’re all under lib/SReview/Schedule
; as of this writing,
parsers exist for pentabarf XML (penta
), the wafer variant of
pentabarf XML (wafer
), a YAML-based format (yaml
), and the ICS
format (ics
) that has however not seen a lot of testing.
Additionally, a multi
parser exists that allows you to create shadow
copies of each found talk (useful if you want to perform multiple
unrelated actions for each talk, e.g., have an injected prerecording
system as well as a transcode of the output after the fact) and a
filtered
parser which stacks with another one and which can be used
to ignore certain talks based on properties of those talks.schedule_options
configuration option so that the relevant
options of the parser are set. Most parsers just expect a url
parameter with the URL of the schedule file.sreview-import
to import the schedule. This should
run from cron once every half hour, normally.anonreviews
configuration option to a nonzero
value, then the /overview
URL in the webinterface will have
links to individual review pages. Reviewers can then just click on
links and do review. However, an out-of-band mechanism for
coordination between reviewers will be required. Note that review
for talks not in the previews
state will not be possible./volunteer/list
URL, where they will receive a number of talks. These
talks will be locked to them; the reviewers will have to finish the
review.notify_actions
configuration
value to an array including email
, the email_template
variable
to a Mojo::Template template for the email, the email_from
configuration value to the email sender address, and the urlbase
configuration value to the base URL where SReview can be found,
then speakers and/or track managers will receive an email
notification when a talk reaches the previews
state containing
the review link.notify_actions
configuration value to an array
including command
, and notify_commands
to an array of arrays,
then the command(s) in notify_commands
will be run when a talk
reaches the previews
state. This may be used to, e.g., cause an
IRC bot to say something.inputglob
and parse_re
configuration parameters of
SReview. The first should contain a filename glob pattern that will
find your raw assets; the second should parse any given filename into
room, year, month, day, hour, minute, and second components.preroll_template
configuration value. See the SVG TRANSFORMATIONS
section in the sreview-transcode POD documentation for details on how
to do that.postroll_template
(for SVG) or postroll
(for PNG)
configuration option.sreview-detect
runs (it should
do so from cron once every half hour by default).The above configuration should work, and will be sufficient for a small
conference. The downside, however, is that there will be only one
backend process running at all times. When a talk reaches the cutting
state, but no sreview-dispatch
process is available immediately, it
may take a long time for a process to become available for use.
There are two ways to fix that:
In the default configuration, it is safe to run sreview-dispatch
multiple times. Each instance will request one job, run it, and then
request the next job.
However, it does not allow prioritizing short-running jobs (like
sreview-cut
, which should never take more than a few minutes) over
long-running ones (like sreview-transcode
, which may easily take
several hours). The result may be that reviewers may have to wait
before the system produces another review, which is not ideal.
A DRM like gridenine, SLURM, PBS, or Torque allows one to submit a job
and have it be run elsewhere. In such a configuration, you would
configure SReview to submit jobs to the DRM system, and it would then be
up to the DRM system to decide where to run it; e.g., it could be
configured to run high-I/O jobs (like sreview-cut
) on the file server
where the files are directly available, whereas high-CPU jobs (like
sreview-transcode
) would run on nodes with many CPU cores and
reasonable network bandwidth but not the fileserver.
Due to the increased flexibility in managing jobs that way, the author of SReview strongly recommends the use of a DRM system for most installations, even if SReview only runs on one system. However, because setting up a DRM system is a lot of work and can be fairly complicated, this is not the default mode of operation.
Since the author is most familiar with gridengine
, a short tutorial on
how to set up a gridengine-based system follows. Instructions for other
DRM systems are welcome.
127.0.0.1
or (like is common on Debian) 127.0.1.1
./etc/hosts
.gridengine-master
, gridengine-exec
, and gridengine-client
packages.qconf -ap smp
. This will open your editor with the configuration
values for the smp
PE that you’re creating. Set the slots
value to
a number not lower than the total number of CPU cores on all the
hosts you will be adding to the network. It’s fine to set it to
something ridiculously high, like 9999
. Save and exit.qconf -ahgrp @allhosts
. This will open your editor with other
configuration values. On the hostlist
line, add the hostname of your
master host. Save and exit.qconf -aq lowprio.q
. Make the following changes:
slots
value here to the number of CPU cores that each
host will have. That is, if you have 8 cores on every machine in
your network, set it to 8. If you have 4 cores, set it to 4. If
you have a mix of machines, choose the value that is valid for the
master host for now.pe_list
value to smp
(we didn’t create the make
and
mpi
values, because we don’t need them).hostlist
value to @allhosts
.
Save and exit.qconf -aq hiprio.q
. Make the same changes as for the
lowprio.q
, above. In addition to that, set the subordinate_list
value to slots=X(lowprio.q:0:sr)
, where X
is the value you entered
for slots
. Save and exit.The above creates a gridengine environment with two queues, one called
lowprio.q
and one called hiprio.q
. The system is configured such
that gridengine will never allow more jobs to be running than you have
CPU cores. However, if all CPUs are busy and a job is submitted in the
hiprio.q
queue, gridengine will send SIGSTOP
to all processes
started by the shortest-running job in the lowprio.q
queue, and then
allow the hiprio.q
job to be started. Once the hiprio.q
job
finishes, the lowprio.q
job will receive a SIGCONT and be allowed to
continue.
To add more worker machines to the system, install gridengine-exec
on
all other machines in the network. Then, perform the following tasks on
the master:
qconf -ae <hostname>
for each of the other hosts. This creates
“exec hosts” in the gridengine configuration.qconf -mhgrp @allhosts
, and add the hostnames of the exechosts
to the hostlist
line.If one or more of the newly added exec hosts have more or less CPU cores than what you configured, then set the number of available slots on a per-node basis, using the following format:
slots default,[hostname=value],[hostname=value]
that is, set the default value for the “slots” configuration parameter
first; and then for each host that should have a different value, use
the format [hostname=X]
for that host. e.g., if most of your hosts
have 8 cores, but host newbox.example.com
has 16 and host
oldthing.example.com
has 4, you would use:
slots 8,[newbox.example.com=16],[oldthing.example.com=4]
If you have more hosts than it turns out you need and you want to shut
one down, note that it is possible to set the slots value to a value
lower than the number of jobs already running on a particular host; if
you do that, gridengine will allow jobs to be finished but not start
any new jobs until the number of running jobs goes below the new
slots
value.
qsub -q lowprio.q sleep 100
, and then run qstat -q
lowprio.q
a few times. You should see your job listed as pending
first, and then after a few seconds it should be queued on a host.
Once the job has run for 100 seconds, it should be removed from the
system (you can remove it forcibly before its time is up by way of
qdel <jobid>
, where jobid is the number of the job that qstat
will
show you and which qsub
returned in its output).sreview-encoder
package installed, and that their
/etc/sreview/config.pm
synchronized.Now, modify the state_actions
so that rather than directly running
your sreview-*
commands, they are submitted into the gridengine
system. e.g., the following would work:
$state_actions = {
'cutting' => 'qsub -cwd -pe smp 1 -b y -V -q hiprio.q -e <%== $output_dir %> -o <%== $output_dir %> -N cut_<%== $talkid %> sreview-cut <%== $talkid %>',
'generating_previews' => 'qsub -cwd -pe smp 1 -b y -V -q hiprio.q -e <%== $output_dir %> -o <%== $output_dir %> -N preview_<%== $talkid %> sreview-previews <%== $talkid %>',
'notification' => 'qsub -cwd -pe smp 1 -b y -V -q hiprio.q -e <%== $output_dir %> -o <%== $output_dir %> -N notify_<%== $talkid %> sreview-notify <%== $talkid %>',
'transcoding' => 'qsub -cwd -pe smp 1 -b y -V -q lowprio.q -e <%== $output_dir %> -o <%== $output_dir %> -N transcode_<%== $talkid %> sreview-transcode <%== $talkid %>',
'uploading' => 'qsub -cwd -pe smp 1 -b y -V -q lowprio.q -e <%== $output_dir %> -o <%== $output_dir %> -N upload_<%== $talkid %> sreview-upload <%== $talkid %>',
};
If you need more help, contact wouter: