VBrowser Plug-in

I have been in contact with Piter De Boer, primary developer for vBrowser. Piter provided me with some direction and code for creating a custom plug-in for vBrowser. I was also added to the developer mailing for the vBrowser project. I'll begin exploring ways to add actual Grid Services to the vBrowser interface, starting with GridMedLee.

GridMedlee Progress

Making progress on GridMedlee testing. I have altered the initial client code to add security options. I have gotten it to the point to where I am receiving a error of Unknown CA. In speaking with my team members this issue should be resolvable by running the code from a controlled node rather than my local laptop. I am in the process of moving the code over to the controlled node and will (hopefully) get it running from there.

Along the way I picked up some knowledge with regard to the GlobusCredential class. When the Introduce framework created the test client for GridMedlee there were several versions of the GridMedleeClient method that were created, some included a parameter for a GlobusCredential object. Upon further investigation I found that the GlobusCredential class can be used to create secure credentials.

I will have another update later today after I get the GridMedlee client built on the controlled node.

Testing, Testing and more testing

• I spent the day working with the GridMedLee services and I feel I have made a lot of progress. I modified the client code sent to me to invoke the GridMedLee service. Currently working through what appears to be a security issue with getting a status back from the GridMedLeeContext service. I have some ideas of a few things to do on my end to try to make sure my set up is functioning properly.
  

• I also went back and re-ran the client for the ZipCode service for Utah and I am getting the same message from their service that I am receiving with GridMedlee.

• I also installed WireShark locally to be able to actually view the contents of data being sent between the client and the server.

Stay tuned friends more to come as I delve deeper into Globus security.

Local Globus Install Completed

I completed the local installation of Globus with a Simple CA (using section A.3 from the Globus 4 Programming book as a guide) on my laptop yesterday afternoon. This will allow me to deploy the Columbia medLee project locally for client coding and testing purposes. It took a couple of tries to get the Simple CA installation to function correctly with Globus.

Some of the lessons I learned when installing Globus:

1. Certificates -- always select root install for certificates (option r) rather than the local install (option l)
   
2. Manually copy the *.pem files from globus/etc directory to /etc/grid-certificates directory
3. Edit the system bash resource file to source both the VDT setup and Globus user env scripts so that the necessary environment variables are available after logging into the system
   

medLEE grid service

I met some of the grid architects from Ohio State University who were also attending the HealthGrid 2008 conference. OSU is working on grid services involving Columbia's Natural Language Processor, medLEE. I scheduled a call for next week to talk with some of the OSU team working with medLEE.

Since this is one of the activities we're working on for the Center of Excellence proof of concept project, it will be helpful to see what Ohio State's perspective is.