add fileserver doc

master
Teyras 8 years ago
parent 29cbcaacbe
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# Fileserver # Fileserver
The fileserver is a simple frontend to a disk storage space that contains
auxiliary files for assignments, files submitted by users and evaluation
results. For a description of the communication protocol used by the frontend
and workers, see the [Communication](#communication) chapter
## Description ## Description
## Architecture The storage is implemented in Python, using the Flask web framework. This
particular implementation evolved from a simple mock fileserver we used in early
stages of development.
### Internal storage structure
Fileserver stores its data in a configurable filesystem folder. This folder has
the following subfolders:
- `./submissions/<id>` - folders that contain files submitted by users
(student's solutions to assignments). `<id>` is an identifier received from
the ReCodEx API.
- `./submission_archives/<id>.zip` - ZIP archives of all submissions. These are
created automatically when a submission is uploaded. `<id>` is an identifier
of the corresponding submission.
- `./tasks/<subkey>/<key>` - supplementary task files (e.g. test inputs and
outputs). `<key>` is a hash of the file content (sha-1 is used) and `<subkey>`
is its first letter (this is an attempt to prevent creating a flat directory
structure).
## Installation ## Installation
To install and use the fileserver, it's necessary to have Python and Pip
installed.
1. Clone this repository
2. Install dependencies using `pip`
```
pip install -r requirements.txt
```
## Configuration and usage ## Configuration and usage
There are several ways of running the ReCodEx fileserver. We'll cover two
typical use cases.
### Running in development mode
For simple development usage, it's possible to run the fileserver in the command
line:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
python3 fileserver.py runserver
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When run like this, the fileserver creates a temporary directory where it stores
all the files and which is deleted when it exits. It's possible to configure it
to use any other directory. Use the `--help` flag for a complete list of options
(such as the port where the server listens).
### Running with uWSGI and a web server
If you need features such as HTTP authentication or efficient serving of static
files, it is recommended to run the app in a full-fledged web server (such as
Apache or Nginx) using WSGI. Following examples are simplified, use the `--help`
flag of the `mkconfig.py` script to see all available options.
### Running using uWSGI
1. (Optional) Create a user for running the fileserver
2. Make sure that your user can access your clone of the repository
3. Run `python mkconfig/mkconfig.py uwsgi --port PORT --user YOUR_USER
--working-directory DIR`
4. Save the configuration file generated by the script and run it with uWSGI,
either directly or using systemd. This depends heavily on your distribution
5. To integrate this with another web server, see the [uWSGI
documentation](http://uwsgi-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/WebServers.html)
Note that the ways distributions package uWSGI can vary wildly. In Debian 8 it's
necessary to convert the configuration file to XML and make sure that the
python3 plugin is loaded instead of python. This plugin also uses Python 3.4,
even though the rest of the system uses Python 3.5 - make sure to install
dependencies for the correct version.

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