Improvements on Slooo

[Essoz]

I know discussing slooo improvements might be premature given that my assignment has not been finished yet. I just don't want my ideas from my experience testing the systems to go away:

Possible Improvements
1. Sandbox for local mode: When running in local mode, slooo should sandbox node instances in order to
1. provide more kinds faults in local mode -- for example, disks, network devices can be simulated and thus we can inject disk and network slowness.
2. get rid of sudoers
3. avoid interference with local environment.
*I am not sure whether the current docker solution is good enough or there are better solutions. Ideally, I think we should provide individualized control over each node, but I am not sure whether it is worth doing so.

2. Better Result Naming Conventions: Slowness config should be included in the folder name so that we don't have to manage results manually.
3. Reduce Command-line Output: Some commandline outputs (like cgdelete errors before benchmark is run) could be eliminated / redirected to some log file because those outputs are massive and not meaningful before benchmark is run.
4. System Usage Recording: This is proposed by Varishith and he is working on this improvement.

[tianyin]

#1 is a huge rewrite. I won't suggest that. Docker is essentially cgroup plus a bunch of things so I don't think it's truly necessary to use Docker.

#2 #3 I don't precisely know what it is, but automation is always a good idea.

#4 is a very good idea. I hope to see a proposal on how you are going to do it.

[varshith15]

I think we should also have a code overhaul, make the code look cleaner using object-oriented programming. Redesigning the complete structure of the code. right now the code still looks more scriptyy
I think this is more important than other features. @tianyin @Essoz

[tianyin]

@varshith15 I don't exactly know what's your vision -- it sounds good but also quite abstract.

~t

[varshith15]

@tianyin I was just looking at code in here https://piazza.com/class/kyd945rv1gt2t?cid=83
It looks so clean and super understandable. I want to make slooo to look similar.

[tianyin]

hehe, glad you are inspired by the student's code.

improving code quality is always a good idea, but I'm not 100% sure you can write the code using xonsh.

[varshith15]

Yes, It won't be as simple with xonsh.

[Essoz]

I agree with making the code cleaner. But i am not sure how we are going to make the tool look like since it is really going to be a huge rewrite. @varshith15

[Essoz]

@varshith15
I have a confusion. Since the student code is implemented using Python, why using xonsh could make things harder?

I think its necessary for us to discuss what to do next, set a clear goal and a serious action plan in order to push this forward. Tianyin asked for a proposal for the system usage recording feature and proposed another feature in #40 . Maybe we can discuss which one to do first. And I totally agree with reorganizing the code, but I think we need to go pass that pretty quickly and solidly to work on further improvements.