corrupted disk image and anonymously sharing an image

[Christopher Hodsdon]

Hello!

Friday afternoon in trying to obtain a local copy of my disk image ubuntu18-dpdk-boost-erisdeps (URN: urn:publicid:IDN+emulab.net+image+sequencer:ubuntu18-dpdk-boost-erisdeps) I seem to have corrupted the image. Is it possible to recover/recover a backup of the image?

A related question: what is the best way to anonymously share a disk image? (We are submitting to a venue that requires running our code so we want the environment to be replicable.) I considered added a copy of the image to a repo, but it seems not straightforward to get a local image onto Emulab.

Thank you,

Christopher Hodsdon

[Mike Hibler]

Sorry, meant to get back to you sooner. Unfortunately, we only keep three
daily snapshots of /proj filesystems, so only back to the 18th. Looks like
it was updated on the 16th.

The current image file is only 10k which is definitely wrong. Did you get
any indication of problems when you created the snapshot?

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[Christopher Hodsdon]

I understand. I didn't snapshot through Emulab, I tried to compress it to then transfer to my local machine; I think I must have made some mistake with compressing it (and then delayed asking about it).

I have other similar images which I can use from now on; what is the best way to anonymously share one of them?

Thanks!

[Mike Hibler]

Ah, maybe that explains why the image file was a tarball containing only
the hash of the actual image file. Did you accidentally use the image file
name as the name of your tarball?

Note that the custom image file (.ndz) is already compressed. The metadata
in the file will allow it to compress a little further.

On the anonymity front, you are just trying to blind your identity inside
Emulab, right? You are not trying to hide the fact that you are using Emulab?
We can probably set up your image in a different project and make sure that
is publically accessible.

> emulab-users/e89a898b-797d-46fb-acb2-c75749b8362en%40googlegroups.com.

[Leigh Stoller]

> I understand. I didn't snapshot through Emulab, I tried to compress it to then transfer to my local machine; I think I must have made some mistake with compressing it (and then delayed asking about it).
>
> I have other similar images which I can use from now on; what is the best way to anonymously share one of them?

Hi. This image cannot be used outside of Cloudlab, so who are you
hoping to share it with?

We just need a bit more detail about what you want to do.

Leigh

[Christopher Hodsdon]

Ah, that makes sense; I could have accidentally done something like that.

For anonymity, that's right, we only need to anonymize the identity, so setting up the image publicly in a different project should work. We expect to be able to work with the venue so they can run the artifact on Emulab. The image would be "urn:publicid:IDN+emulab.net+image+sequencer:ubuntu-go1.18.5:0".

Thank you for your help!

Christopher

[Leigh Stoller]

> We expect to be able to work with the venue so they can run the artifact on Emulab. The image would be "urn:publicid:IDN+emulab.net+image+sequencer:ubuntu-go1.18.5:0".

So then you will need users from the venue to join that project
so they can run the artifact?

Leigh

[Christopher Hodsdon]

Sorry, I mean we expect users from the venue to be able to create an experiment profile (and an account on Emulab if they don't have one), that uses the image, that has been made public under some other project to anonymize us (if you are able to do that).

[Eric Eide]

Christopher Hodsdon <chod...@princeton.edu> writes:

> Sorry, I mean we expect users from the venue to be able to create an
> experiment profile (and an account on Emulab if they don't have one), that
> uses the image, that has been made public under some other project to
> anonymize us (if you are able to do that).

Consider if you also want to publish a profile for those users to use, so that
they don't have to write one for themselves.

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Eric Eide <ee...@cs.utah.edu> . University of Utah School of Computing
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[Leigh Stoller]

> Sorry, I mean we expect users from the venue to be able to create an experiment profile (and an account on Emulab if they don't have one), that uses the image, that has been made public under some other project to anonymize us (if you are able to do that).

Yes, you want to create a profile for those users if you want them
to have a positive experience. :-)

The profile can be duplicated into the same project as the image.
But someone will have to approve venue users to the project.

Leigh

[Christopher Hodsdon]

Ah, right, this profile (https://www.emulab.net/portal/instantiate.php?profile=eea32865d1a954eb98517612ca85896a2d5f952a) would be the profile to use.

Thank you!

Christopher

[Leigh Stoller]

> Ah, right, this profile (https://www.emulab.net/portal/instantiate.php?profile=eea32865d1a954eb98517612ca85896a2d5f952a) would be the profile to use.

Hi. We talked about your needs in the group meeting today. We
have plans to make this kind of anonymity easier in the future,
but for now the best approach is this; go to google mail and create
a new email account, being sure to obscure your identity in the
email address you choose and to not add any personal data to
the account.

Then use that email to create a new project. Tell us the name
of the project and email so we can approve the project. Then
you create your profile in the project (do not copy it, create
a new one). We can also make a copy of the image so there is no
history available.

Then when reviewers join your new project, you can handle the
approvals.

Sound like a good plan?

Thanks
Leigh

[Christopher Hodsdon]

Great! This sounds like a good plan, I will make the account/project in the next couple of days and let you know.

Thank you so much!

Christopher