[school-discuss] [Fwd: X Application Server System]

[Doug Loss <drloss@suscom.net>]

I just received this message this morning.  Malcolm's explanation 
(especially the one on his "about xass" webpage) of how this works is 
very interesting.  I think this application could have definite 
educational uses.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: X Application Server System
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2003 12:24:38 +1000
From: m.smith6@ugrad.unimelb.edu.au
To: satimis@writeme.com, drloss@suscom.net

hi,

I just noticed your discussion last year about my software: 
http://archives.seul.org/schoolforge/discuss/Oct-2002/msg00100.html

I have since posted an 'about xass' link on the site, 
http://xass.sourceforge.net/ - it seemed like most people didn't 
understand what the software was supposed to achieve, either.

To cut it short, if you have multiple servers, these can be used to host 
graphical, X11 applications that are displayed on a large number of 
clients.  XASS means that the client will request an application to be 
run on any of the servers, without being tied to a specific one. 
Loadbalancing code should (theoretically) ensure much more efficient 
resource utilisation, as a server that is fast to respond and doing 
relatively little will be used in preference to one that takes a long 
time to respond or is busy.

The management advantage is that new servers can be added very easily, 
and if clients are configured to broadcast for servers, no client 
reconfiguration is necessary.  If an application is under heavy use, it 
is easy to plug in a new application server and have it pick up the 
load, or make that application available on another server.

It supports a whole range of security features, users are authenticated 
with challenge-response, and there's a lot of configurability about how 
some apps will run (ie., as specific user/group, priority, etc.)

So XASS is basically a management tool which (I feel) is a better 
approach for dealing with distributed X11 application environments.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

- M
--
Malcolm Smith
Undergraduate LLB Student
malcolms@ugrad.unimelb.edu.au
http://malx.digitalerection.com/


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Doug Loss                 Courage is resistance to
Data Network Coordinator  fear, mastery of fear --
Bloomsburg University     not absence of fear.
dloss@bloomu.edu           Mark Twain