About

vipeval is a backend service for ECS/ViP. It's running as a pure client i.e. there is no server running.

• You need Ruby 2.1.x installed
• No database needed

It's allowed to run multiple instances of vipeval. They work concurrently on their ECS resources.

Installation

Just download vipeval package (github zip, freeit tgz) and unpack or clone it from git repository (github, freeit) via git clone.

Configuration

Change into vipeval root directory. Edit config/appcfg.yml (see explanations in config file). Normally you should only edit under ecs:.

Running

Running in foreground

Change into vipeval root directory and type:

bundle exec rails console -e production

In the upcoming irb (interactive ruby shell) type:

MainLoop.instance.start

Running in background

For instance via rails runner, change into vipeval root directory and type:

bundle exec rails runner -e production MainLoop.instance.start &

or

/path/to/vipeval/bundle exec rails runner -e production MainLoop.instance.start &

You can place this also in a startup script (e.g. sles12 init script):

...
case "$1" in
    start)
        echo -n "Starting VIP Evaluation Backend"
        su -l -c "cd $VIPEVAL_ROOT && bundle exec rails runner -e production MainLoop.instance.start &" freeit
        rc_status -v
        ;;
    stop)
...

Providing ECS basic auth credentials via environment variables

For security reasons you may want to serve at least the ECS login password via shell environment variable. Therefore you must uncomment the #password: <%= ENV['ECS_PASSWORD'] %> line in config/appcfg.yml and comment the old password: ... line. Then you can provide the password as an environment variable at the command line:

ECS_PASSWORD=my-secure-password bundle exec rails console -e production

or

ECS_PASSWORD=my-secure-password bundle exec rails runner -e production MainLoop.instance.start &

Of course it's up to you how you set the ECS_PASSWORD enverionment variable. For instance you set it in your startup script (e.g. sles12 init script), which is owned by root and could only read by him. Or read it from a file owned and readable by root:

ECS_PASSWORD=$(cat my_password_file) bundle exec ...