Balancing Zero-Admin and Incremental Integration in Real-World Ubicomp Environments Andy Szybalski Adviser: Armando Fox 25 May 2004

1/10 Stanford iRoom Conference room augmented with: –3 SmartBoard displays –wireless input and output devices –custom software infrastructure and applications (iROS) Facilitates collaborative work

2/10 iROS Incremental integration: applications communicate indirectly through Event Heap –Minimizes effort of integration associated with adding new applications to the environment Difficult to recover from hardware and software failures PointRight for Win Event Heap server PointRight for Mac Multi Browse Sender Multi Browse Rec’ver Multi Browse Sender Multi Browse Rec’ver OpenURL( X

3/10 Zero-Admin 1. recoverability from transient hardware and software failures 2.configuration minimal and centralized 3.installation can be done quickly and easily to integrated new machines into the environment 4.boundaries of interaction clearly defined –All applications on a machine connected or disconnected –One Event Heap per room without increasing effort of integration

4/10 iROS Manager iROS Manager is a daemon that controls starting, monitoring, and stopping of applications in a ubicomp environment Must be flexible enough to accommodate arbitrary applications –takes advantage of universal mechanisms iROS Manager Mac app Jav a app Win app Jav a app Event Heap server

5/10 Recoverability Restartability: if an application stops functioning, iROS Manager kills its process and restarts it. Monitoring: how to tell if an application is functioning properly –default: process alive –custom Event Heap monitor: ping Uses universal mechanisms, but: –applications must be restartable iROS Manager Java application Event Heap server default monitor Event Heap monitor PingEvent()

6/10 Configuration Global settings across all applications In addition, each application must be accompanied by a config.ini file specifying how it should be run: APPLICATION = java MultiBrowseService ${MACHINE_NAME} ${EHEAP_SERVER} Someone must write these config.ini files

7/10 Zero-Admin 1. recoverability from transient hardware and software failures 2.configuration minimal and centralized 3.installation can be done quickly and easily to integrated new machines into the environment 4.boundaries of interaction clearly defined –All applications on a machine connected or disconnected –One Event Heap per room mostly without increasing effort of integration

8/10 Success Story: TeamSpace Model for a public zero- admin interactive workspace –Deployed in Meyer Library TeamSpace client installation with iROS Manager, PointRight, MultiBrowse Simple GUI for iROS Manager

9/10 TeamSpace GUI Event Heap server preset to teamspace.stanford.edu Connected to Event Heap iff application is open Very few code modifications needed: –Integrated MultiBrowse sender functionality into GUI –Made PointRight non- configurable –Nomenclature

10/10 Conclusions Future work –restartability using dependencies –global configuration across multiple machines It is possible to create a unified, zero-admin environment from a heterogeneous set of software Balance between zero-admin and incremental integration Andy Szybalski

11/10 Menu GUI

12/10 Launcher GUI

13/10 Installer

14/10 Patch Panel