The document provides an overview of the Autolab workshop software. It discusses the history and development of Autolab since 2010, including its adoption of VM support, an autograder, and a Rails upgrade. It notes Autolab serves around 2500 students per semester across many classes. The document outlines plans to make Autolab open source to increase customizability and adoption. It summarizes the Rails frontend and important models. It also describes the standalone Tango job dispatch service and virtual machine management system used for autograding. Finally, it provides instructions for getting involved in the Autolab project.

1. WORKSHOP
7th of November, 2014

2. Background
● Started in 2010 by Prof. Dave O’Hallaron
○ 15-213 followed by 15-112
● Completely student-run
● Timeline:
○ < 2010: Single machine
○ > 2010: VM support
○ > 2011: Autodriver
○ > 2013: Rails upgrade and Tango Web API

3. Some Numbers
● Approximately 2500 students use it every semester
● 77 classes since 2010 between CMU and CMU-Qatar
● 2 coding challenges
● 2014 (as of 3:20PM today): 320,538 -> ~1034 jobs/day
2012 2013 2014

4. Becoming Open Source
● Higher customizability
● Larger adoption rate
● Decoupling of two core components
● CMU spirit
● Add your own features!
○ PDF annotation
○ Online quizzes
○ Distributed Job Queue

5. Overview of Front-end
● Ruby on Rails
○ REST
○ Model-View-Controller (MVC)
■ Model: Internal structure
■ View: What user sees
■ Controller: Supply objects to view for rendering,
page redirecting, etc.
○ Javascript, CSS, etc.

6. Overview of Front-end
● Important model relations
CUD: CourseUserDatum
AUD: AssessmentUserDatum
User CUD Course
AssessmentAUD
Submission

7. Overview of Front-end
● Resources & Routing
○ RESTful CRUD
○ In the process of switching to a more traditional
REST interface for models
○ Each Resource Gets 7 routes by default

8. Overview of Front-end
● For example, Users
○ GET /users => index
○ GET /users/new => new
○ POST /users => create
○ GET /users/:id => show
○ GET /users/:id/edit => edit
○ PATCH /users/:id => update
○ DELETE /users/:id => destroy

9. Overview of Tango
● External, standalone, job dispatch service
● Stateless
● Highly flexible
● Web API

10. Overview of Tango
Tango
creates directory
stores files
poll for output file
optional callback
open
upload
addJob
poll
callback
job queue

11. Overview of Tango
Tango VM pool (EC2/CMU)
rhel.img
rhel.img
rhel601.img
rhel210.img
worker thread
initializeVM
waitVM
copyIn
copyOut
destroyVM
runJob
vmms
job queue

12. Overview of Tango
● Virtual Machine Management System (VMMS)
● Extending Tango for OpenStack, Docker, Vagrant, Xen
etc

13. Autograding
Autolab
Upon submission
#validateHandin
#saveHandin
#autogradeAfterHandin
- #createVm
Upon receiving Callback
#autogradeDone
#saveAutograde
- #parseAutoresult
Tango
creates directory
stores files
poll for output file
optional callback
VM pool (EC2/CMU)
rhel.img
rhel.img
rhel601.img
rhel210.img
open
upload
addJob
poll
callback
worker thread
initializeVM
waitVM
copyIn
copyOut
destroyVM
runJob
/courses/COURSE_ID/assessments/AS
SET_ID/handin
.c
tangoRES
T
vmms

14. Docs
● http://docs.autolab.cs.cmu.edu/
● https://github.com/autolab/Tango/wiki

15. Getting Started...
● What’s the hardest part of joining a project?
o Setting up your environment!
● We’ve set up an environment for you!
● See the Autolab README for full instructions
o Later, you will need your own DB
o ...and possibly your own Tango for Autograding

16. Getting Started...
1. Fork Autolab repo on github (https://github.com/autolab/Autolab.git)
1. You can’t push to our repo, so you need to fork your own
2. ssh autolab@54.201.118.81
3. git clone https://github.com/<github_id>/Autolab.git <your_andrewID>
4. cd <your_andrewID>
5. cp lib/autoConfig.rb.template lib/autoConfig.rb
6. cp config/database.yml.template config/database.yml

17. 6. In autoConfig.rb change:
- RESTFUL_HOST = “greatwhite.ics.cs.cmu.edu”
- RESTFUL_PORT = 3000
- AUTOCONFIG_COURSE_DIR =
“/home/autolab/<andrew_ID>/courses”
- RESTFUL_KEY = “demo”
- RESTFUL_COURSELAB = “autolab-demo”
Getting Started...

18. Getting Started...
7. In config/database.yml change:
- database: <andrew_ID>_autolab_development
- username: root
- password: ‘autolab-demo’
8. Populate Autolab by running:
- bundle exec rake db:create db:migrate
- rake autolab:populate
9. Run Autolab!
- rails s -p <fav_port_num_between_9000_and_9999>
- 54.201.118.81:<port>
- Log in via “Developer Login”, enter email “admin@foo.bar”.

19. Contributing to Autolab
1. Fork the repository and create a local clone of your fork
a. https://github.com/autolab/Autolab
b. https://github.com/autolab/Tango
1. Assign yourself to a new or existing issue on the project
a. https://github.com/autolab/Autolab/issues
b. https://github.com/autolab/Tango/issues

20. Contributing to Autolab
3. Create a new local branch “fix_issue” and commit
a. git checkout -b "fix_issue”
b. git add .
c. git commit -m “commit_msg. Fixes #<issue_num>”
3. Push the branch to GitHub
a. git push origin “fix_issue”

21. Contributing to Autolab
4. Submit a pull request
a. navigate to your fork of the project
b. click the large green “compare and review” button
4. We will review and merge useful pull requests
a. documentation and comments on pull requests are
useful in this regard

22. Contributing to Autolab
6. Keep your forked repository synced with the project
a. git remote add upstream
https://github.com/autolab/Tango.git
b. git remote add upstream
https://github.com/autolab/Autolab.git
c. git checkout master
d. git fetch upstream
e. git merge upstream/master

23. Questions and Comments
Questions and
Comments
autolab-dev@andrew.cmu.edu