- Name: Archit Sharma
- FAS Account: Arcolife
- Fedora userpage: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Arcolife
Contact Information
- Email Address: arc[DOT]sh[DOT]ams[AT]gmail[DOT]com
- Blog URL: http://blog.arcolife.in
- Freenode IRC Nick: arcolife
Why do you want to work with the Fedora Project?
Because Fedora was my entry point into the Open Source Culture (my college seniors introduced me to all of it) and I wish to contribute back!
Do you have any past involvement with the Fedora project or any other open source project as a contributor?
I have held workshops at my college, giving hands-on experience to participants with installation and basic usage. I was a summer student in CERN Labs, Geneva and worked on their Open Sourced Framework. I also keep making timely contributions on Github. (https://github.com/arcolife)
Did you participate with the past GSoC programs, if so which years, which organizations?
No.
Will you continue contributing/ supporting the Fedora project after the GSoC 2014 program, if yes, which team(s), you are interested with?
Yes. Fedora Packaging and Fedora Ambassadors
Why should we choose you over other applicants?
Because I'm efficient at improvising according the given task at hand. Because when I work on a project, I completely devote my time to the sole purpose of successful completion of the tasks (don't have a solid proof, but you could check my github streak and commits) and I believe in and have experience of - Agile Software Development methodology.
Proposal
Proposal for Google Summer of Code 2014
Name: Archit Sharma Email Address: archit.py@gmail.com Freenode IRC Nick: arcolife Twitter: @arcolife Location (City, Country and/or Time Zone): New Delhi, India (UTC + 5:30) Proposal Title: FedoraProject - Afterthought: A dependency for automation/deployment tools.
Motivation for Proposal / Goal: This idea was proposed due to the need felt for a system where disjoint teams are able to collaborate on a project without needing to worry about the configuration details of development/deployment servers. Also, there was one particular event (wiki/Fedora_Project) that happened in August 2008 (a security intrusion), when several Fedora servers were compromised, one of which was used for signing Fedora update packages. Although precautionary measures were taken, one of the original problem probably revolved around the integrity issues with the methods in existance.
The proposed idea makes automating tasks for the purpose of System Administration, much easier, by passing commands as URI parameters, and executing customized tasks on the server. Afterthought fetches the latest routines, and then executes the commands received over URI. At the same time, it takes care of integrity testing / authorization protocols, thought PGP/GPG and BrowserID. In a nutshell, its a DNS for automation tools and is a dependency for automation tools and not just another deployment tool.
Use Cases:
Task automation commands using Natural Language Processing capabilities, for easy interaction. OpenStack based development/deployment automation and routine execution for sandboxing/Contextualization through Browser. A system administrator can use automated tasks to perform periodic backups, monitor the system, run custom scripts, and more. Fedora comes with several automated tasks utilities: cron, at, and batch. Arguments could be passed to such utilities over the internet as well. The documentation for configuring Anacron Jobs at ( http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/17/html/System_Administrators_Guide/ch-Automating_System_Tasks.html#s2-configuring-anacron-jobs ) ..mentions several parameters that could be passed through variables like SHELL, PATH and so on, which could be including in a URI.
Expected Results: An interactive tool for the *nix systems, with a nice interface. Features integrations with Cron and Anacron (daemons that can be used to schedule the execution of recurring tasks) ..for its first release. Queued tasks, Lazy loaded, but organized and sure to execute. Features one-time / recurring job execution parameters. No bugs / deprications faced. Self-aware system. Seamlessly extends possiblities w.r.t. present automation tools. Diversify collaborations – Teams in perhaps different timezones/locations, could work together Personalization: configuring a base procedure customized to particular profiles / credentials.
Workflow:
By operation, one can simply consider it as a dynamic, lazy-loaded shell-script. As of now, It would: Take an URI as argument Fetch the data of the URI Strip/parse the formatted data (with instruction sets) Execute the commands/job
In order to use Afterthought, a user has a base procedure prepared and passed to afterthought, something like:
1. $ afterthought http://zomg.app/install 2. $ afterthought https://le-wild-github.app/username/puses/to/ci 3. $ afterthought https://thoughtpolice.tld/openshift/deploy?user=id&code=github.com/foo/bar 4. $ afterthought https://thoughtpolice.tld/user/?profile=setup-irc-bouncer-on-my-raspberry-pidora 5. $ afterthought https://thoughtpolice.tld/user/?profile=run-httpd-server-on-a-docker-image-of-fedora
OR maybe, in a Dockerfile ( Refer: http://docs.docker.io/en/latest/reference/builder/#cmd )
CMD ["afterthought", "http://thoughthacker.tld/rule-the-world#plan-TBD-but-this-image-ships-today"]
Implementation Details: Writing each component using some of the options from the following: - Rust || C/C++ || Go - Node.js::FlatIron/Express - Python::Flask/Pyramids - Ruby::Rails/Camping
The components are: - A JSON file containing the parameters for interaction with HTML5 based web applications. - Client-side interactive scripts that work based on systemctl/gconf philosophy. - AJAX Calls to query server status. - Systemctl / gconf integration OR explore other options, for making an interactive service. - Docker Registry (https://github.com/dotcloud/docker-registry) to keep a list of trusted and non-trusted source, different tasks and also, to handle Privilege escalation. - Server side Firewall configuration and SELinux policies, as per the Fedora Security Guide. - Implement server/client side Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) protocol for securing server communications, using GnuPG. PGP supports message - authentication and integrity checking. - Calculate md5 hash of the file received, to verify integrity of transfer. - Explore possibility of an end-point agent installation for custom base routines or a service that runs in browser. - A Database for storing registry preferences, like: configurations, routines, recurring/one-time, souces, and so on.. - Algorithms to handle routine execution, efficient query processing (I/O cost + CPU cost + communication cost)
Tentative Timeline:
Detailed Plan for May - September'14
- April 21 - May 23 (Community Bonding Period)
Get to know mentors, read documentation, explore existing solutions and refine the proposal Generate a sketch and further refine involved modules.
- May 24- June 20 (Coding - Phase 1)
Implement the following components: - A JSON file containing the parameters for interaction with HTML5 based web applications. - AJAX Calls to query server status. - A Database for storing registry preferences, like: configurations, routines,
- June 21 - July 17 (Coding - Phase 2)
- Docker Registry (https://github.com/dotcloud/docker-registry) to keep a list of trusted and
non-trusted source, different tasks and also, to handle Privilege escalation.
- Algorithms to handle routine execution, efficient query processing (I/O cost + CPU cost + communication cost)
- July 18 - July 31 (Coding - Phase 3)
Slow down, since have to give backlogs (7th of the 8 semesters Bachelors program) This was due to absence from college for pursuing an internship with CERN during 7th semester. Meanwhile, Implement MD5 checker and integrate GnuPGP
- August 1 - August 14 (UI , Bug fixing)
Client-side interactive scripts that work based on systemctl/gconf philosophy. Encourage community to try out the software, and do some modifications to make it easy to use and attractive. Fix bugs.
- August 15 - August 26 (The last stop)
Write code documentation, comments and techbase/userbase articles.
Also, if any part my proposal is not clear, I will be very happy to clarify it.
Do you have other obligations from late May to early August (school, work, etc.)?
I assure that I will give around 40 hours per week for my work with no other obligations, except for my college exams for a week in mid-July, that have crept into the schedule, due to a 2 months absence from college for a previous internship at CERN, in my previous semester.
Who am I?
I am a Computer Science Undergraduate student from India (Batch of 2014). Essentially, I think of myself as an open-source evangelist, who: has been a regular Linux user since past 3 years. Presently using Fedora & Ubuntu. mostly speaks Python on backend, but may speak Java, C/C++ as well, and Rust in this case. recently got addicted to Github. (https://github.com/arcolife)
1. Portfolio at http://work.arcolife.in 2. User:Arcolife on Fedora Project
I've recently interned at RedHat and CERN, and got to meet people who are leading developers/promoters of FOSS tools and techniques in India and abroad. While having a conversation with my mentor Soumya Deb, he encouraged me to apply for Summer of Code this year. Thence, I was inspired to participate in GSoC'14 and have decided to implement the above mentioned idea.
On the community part, I have been a helping hand at PyCon India'12. I am a part of the local college LUG, ALiAS, and have helped spread the open culture philosophy among students, by organizing workshops that promote the use of Fedora and other Open Sourced Softwares. While doing so, I also promote the use of Agile Software Development Methodology.