Creating Mallard Packages and Licenses

How do I find out who has requested a Mallard license?

People requesting a license are required to fill out the Mallard registration form in the "License Info" section of the main Mallard home page. The information they provide via the form is saved in a file for later retrieval. You will need to use this information when creating the package and license.

This list of requestors and the information they've provided about their servers is reachable via the Course Information link for the Develop course on the wocket alpha server. Requests are listed in the order in which they were received. Each is marked with the date on which it was received.
(Note: This is a PWF Mallard site. All members of the Mallard development team should have access to the course.)

Currently, when a user submits the registration form, an automatic notification e-mail is sent to the following people:

• mallard@uiuc.edu (currently pointing to Maiko's staff account)
• djb@wocket.csl.uiuc.edu

Will all requestors need both a Mallard code package and a license?

First time Mallard users (those who do not currently have any version of Mallard installed on their servers) will always need both a code package and a license. Currently this is the most common scenario.

Those wishing to renew an existing license will certainly need a new license, but will not need a new code package except as part of a general Mallard version upgrade.

When we release an upgraded version of Mallard, all license holders will need new code packages created for them, but will not need new licenses created.

Okay. Can I just go ahead and create the license and/or package as soon as the user submits the registration form?

Almost! Technically, the requestors are required to pay the license fee before they receive any code or license. However, the UIUC Research and Technology Management Office takes a while to fully process the purchase orders. To eliminate excessive delays, we ask the requestors to fax a copy of the purchase order or check here to the Mallard development team, and create the package and/or license when that fax is received.

Faxes may be sent to 217-244-0581 (phone in Donna J. Brown's office, 451-A C&SRL).

How do I create and distribute a license without creating a Mallard code package?

As described above, you will need to do this for license renewals in the absence of a general Mallard version upgrade.

1. Make sure you are actually logged into wocket. You can log into wocket either at the console or by ssh from a window on another machine (namely staff.uiuc.edu or eesn2.ews.uiuc.edu).

2. Make sure you are mallard. You need to be mallard because mallard both owns all of the Mallard code files and ftp directories and has permission to execute the packaging and license creation programs.

   You become mallard by typing su - mallard and then supplying the mallard password when asked. Note that this is user mallard's unix login password on wocket, not the password for any Mallard course site.

3. Change directories into the Mallard encryption and packaging directory. To do this type
   cd /usr/local/webdata/encrypt/bin .

   This is the directory containing the various scripts necessary for creating Mallard code packages and licenses. There are a great variety of these (as you will see if you list the files!) because recent changes to the structure of the Mallard file tree require a different version of the installation program and included files for each version we are currently supporting, and each of these versions may include different "extra" input types if requested.

4. Create the license by typing perl create_license and providing the information requested. You will be asked for three pieces of information:
   • The IP address of the server requesting a license

     This information was submitted as part of the Mallard registration form. Alternatively, if you know the hostname of the server, you may determine its IP address by typing nslookup XXX where XXX is the fully qualified hostname of the server (the whole hostname including dots, out to the final "edu" or "com").

   • The size of the license requested (number of users)

     This information was submitted as part of the Mallard registration form. Choose the appropriate size from the menu presented to you.

   • The expiration date for the new license

     Standard Mallard licenses are valid for one year. This means that you should set the expiration date for the license to be one year plus one day from the creation date. If you are creating a license January 1, 1999, it should be set to expire on January 2, 2000.

     You will be asked to enter the year, month, day, hour and minute separately. Note that years should be specified with 4 digits. The hour and minute are set to 0.

   The newly created license will be saved in a file "license" in the current directory (/usr/local/webdata/encrypt/bin).

5. Make the license available for anonymous ftp retrieval. You will need to copy the license into a directory /usr/local/webdata/ftp/pub/mallard/XXX where XXX is any name you wish to use. To do this, type the following:
   • cd /usr/local/webdata/ftp/pub/mallard

     You may wish to do an ls to see what directories currently exist. Most of these contain Mallard code packages for various sites.

   • mkdir XXX

   • cp /usr/local/webdata/encrypt/bin/license XXX/

6. Ensure that the requestor is able to ftp files from wocket.

   For license renewals this should not be an issue, as they have already been permitted to ftp their original license and/or code package. To determine if a remote site is able to ftp files from wocket, look at the file /etc/hosts.allow on wocket. You should find a line similar to the following:

                  in.ftpd : 138.87.60.2 : rfc931 : allow
         

   The IP address should be the IP address of the server requesting a license.

   If you do not see such a line, you will need to add it. To do this, you will need to edit the /etc/hosts.allow file as root. Simply copy an existing line and change the IP address given.

7. E-mail the requestor to let her know the license is ready.

   You should e-mail the person listed as technical contact in the Mallard registration form.

How will the requestor get the license I've created?

Assuming you have followed steps 5 and 6 above, the license will be retrievable via anonymous ftp to wocket.csl.uiuc.edu in the pub/mallard/XXX directory, where XXX is the name of the ftp directory you chose to create in step 5. You should definitely let the user know this (including the correct directory name!) in your e-mail.

How do I create an entire Mallard encrypted code package?

Right now, you ask Maiko. She will fill this area in shortly.