[Seaside] Seaside/Squeak/Linux: service with GUI as needed

Norbert Hartl norbert at hartl.name
Mon Jul 14 09:00:24 UTC 2008


On Sat, 2008-07-12 at 21:52 +0200, Lukas Renggli wrote:
> >  (1) Pharo image(s) run as service(s); the computer is (ab)used pretty
> >  much as an appliance; technicians are told to plug in the network cable,
> >  then turn on the box, and if all is well, it "just works".
> 
> That's already possible.
> 
> >  (2) most (Smalltalk) configuration tasks happen via a Seaside interface.
> 
> What configuration tasks? If these are not yet available an interface
> could certainly be built. OmniBrowser and the XUL integration is also
> a possibility here.
> 
> >  (3) I realize that I can edit code through Seaside's halos, but I will
> >  sometimes want to interact graphically with the Squeak image; it will be
> >  doing other things beyond serving Seaside pages.  I envision (please
> >  tell me if there are better ways) making a remote desktop (or similar)
> >  connection to the server, stopping the offending service, and restarting
> >  it as a desktop user to debug, save the changed image, exit, restart the
> >  service, and log out.
> 
> OmniBrowser.
> 
> >  Is this a SSH/VNC task, or is there a better way.  Some things I have
> >  read appear to suggest that one can simply use VNC to attach to the
> >  running Squeak service and a GUI instantly appears???  That seems too
> >  slick to expect it to work.
> 
> RemoteFrameBuffer is perfect to do that. Like this you start you image
> headless on the server, and use a VNC client to connect to the screen
> from anywhere. I use that on all my servers.
> 
Yes, me too. Do you think it would be possible to let the squeak browser
module do a vnc connection. That could be cool for some situations where
you just enter the https url of your admin site and connect from the
browser image to the production image. But I don't know if the squeak
module is able to connect on another port. Tunneling the vnc of port 80
would be some work and would destroy the benefit.

Norbert 
> >  Do things change if one replaces Linux with Windows?  I am trying to
> >  escape, but it will take some time to complete the transfer.
> 
> Linux is great for deployment. A long time ago I did some deployment
> on Windows servers. What's inside the image (e.g. RemoteFrameBuffer)
> works equally well. The host OS is not so cool ...
> 
> Cheers,
> Lukas
> 



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