myVocs box
What is it?
myVocs box is a foundation for building collaboration environments
that can reach around the world. myVocs box leverages cutting edge
trust technologies that allow you to create, manage, and participate
in projects that include your own resources, your collaborator's
resources, or someone elses resources and have each of them know who
you, who belongs to the project, and what they can do. Resources can
range from simple web pages, to complex content management systems, to
desktop computers,and high performance computing clusters . You'll
find some examples of those and how they operate on myVocs
box. Finally, myVocs box is a packaged version of the myVocs collaboration environment for you
to explore, build on, and share. To learn more visit myVocs.org, use Google, and join
the project.
Where can I get it?
You can download myVocs box by following this
link(md5sum: 4bb8fbebc8b8ebf25bfb15ac777ebc77) (release announcement), but unless you're on a fat pipe, be patient.
You're downloading a ready to run system in virtual machine form. It's
been compressed but it might take a while on
slower connections.
Can I run my web site with it?
This version of myVocs box isn't meant to run directly on the Internet
without customizing . It's not that it's inherently insecure, in fact
the architectural foundations are rock solid. It's more of a
practical recommendation. The default configuration has been chosen
to ease use and encourage exploring. This is not necessarily the
right choice for an environment where anyone in the world might stop
by. This is a 0.1 release, after all, so you'll likely be helping to
discover security lapses.
How do I run it?
myVocs box is a ready to run virtual machine. If you already have a
VMware environment, just pop it in place next to your other VMs and
fire it up! If you don't, you'll need to at least get VMware's free (as in
beer) VMPlayer tool and install that before you can run the
myVocs-box VM. Once that's done you can just start the VM on the
VMware provided NAT network. After it's running you'll want to point
your web browser at it. To do this you'll need to associate the host
name "myvocs-box" with the running box. To do that you'll want to know
what IP address the myVocs-box is running on. The current IP address
for the myVocs-box is printed on the VM console after the machine
starts up. You need to put that address with the name "myvocs-box" in
your host machine's /etc/hosts file. After that just point your
browser at http://myVocs-box. The
technologies inside myVocs box rely on strong trust relationships. In
order to improve your experience with this myVocs box, you should have
your browser trust this myVocs box by clicking on the Trust Me link above
the command prompt.
How do I use it?
There are two main ways of interacting with myVocs box depending on
how familiar you are with the technologies. The casual approach is to
browse around the provided links starting at the front page. The expert approach is to
execute commands on the myVocs box. These commands are the foundation
for integrating the myVocs box (and myVocs.org for that matter) into your web
browser and desktop to build your own collaboration environment.
How can I get more help?
More documentation is on the way but in the mean time you can join the
myVocs
box project mail list and ask your questions there. Check back
here for more information in the coming weeks.
How can I help?
That's the best question. You can get involved by joining the myVocs-box
project at myVocs.org.
You can join the
developers mail list, report
bugs, maintain a project blog, or help
with documention. If you've never logged into myVocs.org before
you'll be prompted to register. Part of this process involves
selecting your idenity provider. If you don't have one or don't know
what this is, just stop by openidp.org and get an
identity there. When you log into myVocs.org, just select "openidp.org
| The Open Identity Provider" from the (long) dropdown list and use
this as your idenity provider. If you see limitations drop us a line,
report a bug, bear with us, and help out.
This is great, but I've decided I *do* want mine to be public. How can I convert a private instance to a public one?
Basically this involves some manual reconfiguration. A step-by-step guide
to hook up a myvocs box instance to openidp.org
has been writen up to help you.
Where does this stuff come from?
The foundations for myVocs.org were funded in part by NFS
ANI-0330543 "NMI Enabled Open Source Collaboration Tools for
Virtual Organizations*", an NSF sponsored effort to explore
integration of open source tools with the NSF Middleware Intiative
tools, and the Office of the Vice President for information
Technology, University of Alabama at Birmingham. myVocs box is an
out growth of this effort.
* Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations
expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not
necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation
or the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Why is this page so lame?
It won't be lame for long. Give me a beak. (for a little longer ;)
John-Paul Robinson
Last modified: Mon Aug 27 21:43:34 CST 2007