Genome Browser in a box config

Virtual machines

The Gbib is a ubuntu 13 linux with apache, mysql and the default tools. See Preparing_VirtualBox_images

Hgwdev has virtualbox installed and one virtual machine (VMs) added called "browserbox". It is the "master" image of the gbib and used by QA.

qateam has aliases to start and stop the VMs: boxStart / boxStop

Once started, browserbox listens at port 1234 for web requests and at 1235 for ssh

Development for the Gbib is a different business and described in Gbib development.

SSH into the box from hgwdev

From hgwdev, as qateam, you can do "ssh box" to connect to the box (this is configured in .ssh/config).

There is no password, because the qateam ssh key was added to the box.

http access to the box from your desktop machine

browserbox accepts only connections from hgwdev, not from outside. You cannot connect from your desktop machine directly. So ssh on your desktop has to be told to forward two ports to hgwdev. Once you start ssh, ssh will listen to some ports on your machine, all data gets tunneled through the ssh connection and appears on hgwdev on the localhost interface, where hgwdev will forward it to the browserbox. To make this happen, add this to your file ~/.ssh/config (create it if necessary) on your own OSX or linux machine:

 Host hgwdevtunnel
 Hostname hgwdev.sdsc.edu
 User <YOURHGWDEVUSER e.g. rhead>
 LocalForward 127.0.0.1:1234 127.0.0.1:1234
 # the following line is only needed for developers
 # LocalForward 127.0.0.1:1236 127.0.0.1:1236

You can then do a "ssh devtunnel" to get connected to hgwdev and have the ports on your machine 1234 (or 1236) forwarded to the box. Port 1234 is a http port, so you can then test the browserbox by pointing your browser on your desktop to http://127.0.0.1:1234

Box release cycle

• for beta testing, the update option "beta" on the box can pull in the beta CGIs that were compiled by the buildmeister
• for public release, the box in this beta state is cleaned and zipped. This zip can be (optionally) tested on Windows or OSX. This can then be pushed to hgdownload.

For development see Gbib development.

Beta testing

Copy cgi-bin-beta from hgwdev into the beta distribution directory of the box:

 ssh box updateBrowser beta

Setup the tunnel:

 ssh hgwdevtunnel

Now you can test the beta CGIs via http://127.0.0.1:1234.

Release

To release the box, run this as qateam on hgwdev:

 boxRelease

This will ssh into the box, clean it (remove temp files, sessions, etc), stop it, zip it into a zipfile and place it onto hgwdev on http://hgwdev.soe.ucsc.edu/browserbox/browserbox.zip This zipfile can then be pushed to hgdownload.