The QA Network

Project for CMSC 621 Advanced Operating Systems

By Shaunak Pagnis and Sumeet Menon

A prototype for a distributed Question and Answer based network.

Installation Instructions

This project is written in the Ruby programming language, please follow the following steps to install ruby.

Note: We're assuming a linux/macOS based machine for running this project

Installing Ruby

Install RVM

$ gpg --keyserver hkp://keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 409B6B1796C275462A1703113804BB82D39DC0E3

curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable

source ~/.rvm/scripts/rvm

rvm requirements

Install ruby 2.5.1 using RVM

rvm install ruby 2.5.1
rvm use 2.5.1 --default

Installing Redis

We recommend using the following instructions for setting up redis:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-use-redis

Project Setup

After installing Ruby, we will now setup the application itself. cd into the project directory and then run:

gem install bundler
gem install foreman
bundle install

The above command will install all the necessary libraries required for this project. Once installation is complete, you can now run this project using following command:

Run the service discovery module:

bundle exec ruby service_discovery/app.rb

After the above command starts the service discovery server on port 4567 Note: It is imperative that we start the service discovery before running any other service.

Then run this command:

foreman start

This will start the following processes:

1. A load balancer app on port 9292
2. A question service app on port 3003
3. An answer service app on port 3002
4. A blockchain viewer app on port 3005
5. A client app on port 3000

Note: For the demo we will be setting up these on separate machines, but by using foreman you can quickly set up on one machine.

To add questions:

Visit http://localhost:3000 where you can see a create question link, click it and then fill the form to create a question.

To add an answer to a question:

Click on the 'View Answers' link which will direct you to the answers page where you can create a new answer

Please email spagnis1@umbc.edu in case you have any difficulty in installing. Thank you!