Service:Main

Software

Various software tools have been established to support communications throughout NAMIC, and to support the software engineering process.

• The na-mic.org domain has been obtained.
• A NAMIC web server has been installed, and web pages have been created.
• Approximately a dozen mailing lists have been established.
• This Wiki has been established.
• HTTPS Certificate for na-mic.org was purchased to allow secure communication.
• A Slicer testing dashboard has been set up.
• A General NAMIC dashboard has been set up.
• A rack of testing machines has been configured.

Backups

• NA-MIC system every day collects all the system description, Wiki and bug tracker databases, and all other important files. These files are packaged once a day
• The system from remote location copies these packages to its location. Once the files are copied, the remote system triggers the system at Kitware.
• If the system at Kitware is not triggered within 5 hours of the backup time, it sends e-mails to several NA-MIC people to make sure everything is ok.
• Example e-mail sent to the administrators:

To: namic-backup@public.kitware.com
Subject: NAMIC Backup Problem
From: root@public.kitware.com

Hello,

There seems to be a problem with the backup of the NA-MIC system. The problem was:
Looks like there was a problem doing backup. Last backup was done more than 50 hours ago

Thank you.

		Kitware System Administrators

Spam protection

• Wiki pages are commonly targeted by people creating bogus links to their own pages to raise the rank of their own pages. This results in many unnecessary links being present on certain pages, as well as vandalising of those pages.
• NA-MIC Wiki uses a spam protection scheme developed by Kitware within the MediaWiki software. This scheme includes a list of all users that can create pages that contain links to other pages.
• If a user that is not authorized tries to make a link to some page outside the NA-MIC community, the e-mail is sent to the administrators. Sample content of this e-mail:

To: wiki-spam@public.kitware.com
Subject: [WIKI-Spam] NAMIC Wiki Somebody triggered spam filter
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2006 02:09:13 -0500 (EST)
From: www-data@public.kitware.com (www-data)

Hello,

There was a spam attempt:
http://rx.auto.pl - User: Z2fool

IP: 200.69.177.214

      Wiki spam filter...

• The user is also presented with the page that explain why his post did not come through. User now has an option to request for the authorization. The page looks like this:

Spam protection filter
From NAMIC Wiki

The page you wanted to save was blocked by the spam filter. This is probably caused by a link to an external site.

Please send the following string to the mailto:wiki-admin@public.kitware.com: "http://www.kitware.com - User: Andy"

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Hardware

• Kitware has purchased and installed a web server at the BWH computer site.
• Kitware has purchased and installed a rack of testing machines at Kitware's computer center.
• The NAMIC server has been recently updated with RAID for improved backup, fault tolerance and performace.
• Kitware has recently run fiber to the Clifton Park office to improve network performance (i.e. a 3-4x speed gain)

Collaboration

• Several courses have been organized and taught with the Training and Dissemination cores.

• Software and hardware in support of the Engineering Core has been installed and configured. This includes the testing server DART, the cross-platform build tool CMake, and various operating system/compiler (i.e., platform) configurations.
• Slicer migration:
  • New download pages
  • Automatic uploading and administering
  • Preparation for moving slicer.org to na-mic.org

Support

• We continue to maintain and support the mailing lists, Wiki, and web pages.
• We are providing support for several NAMIC tools including VTK, ITK, KWWidgets, CMake and DART.
• Kitware has assigned Mathieu Malaterre as a dedicated support person for the Slicer 3.0 initialive.
• Organizing MICCAI 2005 Open Source Workshop (See details).
• Preparing ITK advanced course at EPFL Switzerland (See details).
• Preparing ITK introductory courses.