Onion Routing

Advanced Internet Computing - Group 4

Team members

• Lisa Fichtinger
• Manuel Geier
• Markus Zisser
• Mihai Lepadat
• Thomas Rieder

Getting started

Important: These instruction are meant for someone who wants to build the system from the ground up. In case you are grading our solution as part of the course at TU Vienna, please skip ahead to "Evaluation as part of the course" at the bottom of the page.

The below instructions were tested on Ubuntu LTS

First of all you need to install activator and its dependencies. Check the website of the Play Framework for details (https://www.playframework.com/download). After that you can either run or build the appliations.

To run them, change into the corresponding directory and execute activator run. This will start the applicalication on the default port 9000. This might be good for taking a look at a single application, but is suboptimal for examining the whole system.

To build them, change into the directory and execute activator dist to generate a binary. Alternatively you may use the build.sh script. This script will generate binaries for all services and store them in a build/ folder. After building you need to extract the ZIP files and start the applications like this:

# name is one of the following: node, originator, quote, directory
bin/$name -Dconfig.file=conf/application.conf

To set the HTTP Port the application binds to, edit the application.conf file. In case the services are running on different machines you will also need to set the IP address and the port at the bottom of the configuration file. Services other than the directory node also require the IP/Port of the other services to be set in the same file.

You should have already installed the Java 7 SDK when installing activator. In case you don't have it installed or you want to run the application on another machine follow the instructions available here.

If you want to keep them running after the shell is closed, do something like:

nohup bin/originator -Dconfig.file=conf/application &

Note: The directory service requires some additional work before it can be started. You need to create a folder for the provisioning logs (in the root of the directory folder) and create a provision_nodes script. This script can be placed anywhere in the PATH. If you don't want any provisioning just create and empty script.

mkdir provision-logs

vim /usr/bin/provision_nodes

#!/usr/bin/env bash
ansible-playbook /root/onion-routing/provision/provision.yml

chmod +x /usr/bin/provision_nodes

Deployment

For the deployment you will need to install Ansible (http://www.ansible.com/home). For Ubuntu the whole configuration looks like this:

apt-get install ansible python-boto

Since we will run a provision playbook we will need to specify an inventory file with localhost

vim /etc/ansible/hosts
[local]
127.0.0.1

We then add the private key to login to the machines to the server:

vim /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg
private_key_file = /etc/ansible/private.key
host_key_checking = False

vim /etc/ansible/private.key
# paste key

# protect teh key
chmod 400 /etc/ansible/private.key

Creating new chain nodes

The provision.yml playbook can be used to instantiate new chain nodes as well as ensure that existing chain nodes are running.

It ensures the following:

• there are #N chain nodes running at EC2 (identified by name)
  • this means that it also stops instances
• nginx is configured
• the chain node process is running
• the process uses the right config file

This playbook assumes that there is a node-binary.zip file in the same folder as the ansible playbook. This file should be created by using activator dist for the chain-node (see above).

It also assumes that the following environment variables are set:

• AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
• AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID

Evaluation as part of the course

First off, as specified in the forum you will get a VM from us that only hosts the originator. To get everything running you have to do the following:

• start the VM
• logon with credentials: aic/aic
• go the the folder of the orignator: cd ~/Desktop/app/originator
• in the conf folder there is a file called application.conf. In this file you will need to configure the following:
  • directory.http.address to the public IP of the directory node on EC2
  • directory.http.port to port 80
  • quote.http.address to the public IP of the quote service on EC2
  • quote.http.port to port 80
  • the public IPs for EC2 instances are not static
  • this means that you need to start the nodes in EC2 now and get the public IPs as listed in the Amazon web interface
  • once you started the EC2 instances you need to start the services themself (see below)
• before starting the originator the quote/directory MUST be running
• you can then start the originator with the following command: bin/originator -Dconfig.file=conf/application.conf
• you can access the web interface of the originator at the IP address of the VM on the port configured in conf/application.conf (the default is 9000)

Note: There is a bug at the /monitor resource of the directory node. On one of our team member's PCs the page needs to refreshed to properly show all nodes - we think that the JavaScript library used to render the table is at fault, but were not able to reproduce it on another machine.

The EC2 Instances

Our EC2 instances are running with the following IDs:

• Chain nodes: G4-T3-Node in Ireland
• Directory: G4-T3-directory in Sao Paulo
• Quote: G4-T3-quote in Sao Paulo
• (Originator: G4-T3-originator in Sau Paulo)

To connect to the instances please use the private key provided by us (aic-ec2.ppk) and the username ubuntu. We run the instances in Sao Paulo because we have to according to this TUWEL thread.

To start the originator:

sudo -i
cd /root/originator
# set quote.http.address to the public IP of the quote service
bin/originator -Dconfig.file=conf/application.conf

The originator is now available at port 80 (there is an nginx reverse proxy running from 80 <-> 9000).

To start the quote:

sudo -i
cd /root/quote
bin/quote -Dconfig.file=conf/application.conf

The quote service is now available at port 80.

To start the directory:

sudo -i
cd /root/directory
bin/directory -Dconfig.file=conf/application.conf

The directory is now available at port 80.

Used technologies

• Java
• Play Framework
• REST APIs
• Ansible