Status: Active
Also involved: none

9grid.it
The 9grid.it project is an experiment in grid computing using plan9 from Bell Labs, its main objective is building three plan9 clusters in three different domain and connect them in a grid using software already written or writing pieces of code eventually needed.
I want to try to build such structure on top of an already distributed system instead of running tons of middleware software on systems designed (many and many years ago) to be sigle workstations.
I have also some secondary objectives:
  • Using virtualization technologies for parts of such environment.
  • Integrate that clusters with services already present.
  • Evaluate if plan9 or related technologies may be used for some other project.
  • Port some my other project to plan9.
Go to
Status: Active
Role: creator and project leader
Past collaborators: Igor, Simone

The Libidentif Project
The Libidentif Project aims to built a probabilistic command recognition library for *NIX and a similar fileserver for Plan9, we intend to develop an "easy to use" set of API for programmers that will correct inside a CLI (Command Line Interface) the given commands on a probabilistic way and according to known templates.
We also intend to develop some "ready to use" application.
Go to
Status: coming soon
Also involved: none

Marketdb
Web page not (yet ?) available
Status: coming soon
Also involved: none

MEL
Web page not (yet ?) available
Status: Active   Role: Creator and Technical coordinator
Also involved: Claudio, Francesco   On the behalf of: Physics Dept. and INFN Perugia

Scheduling optimization
In our Physics Department we have a Linux cluster with about 200 Cpus running Torque/Maui as Resource Manager/Scheduler. Our farm has many singularites:
  • It's a GRID farm connected with the EGEE european infrastructure.
  • Beyond GRID jobs it serves also local people jobs.
  • It has been built with the economic contribution of different local groups (that work on different physics experiments)
  • It uses virtualization technologies.
In this scenario the scheduling is a key point of the whole infrastructure, there are many needs to be satisfied and often requirements are not compatible one with each other. The number of variables that influence the scheduling behaviour are so much that the optimization is an hard task.
This project is about finding a way to optimize our farm in particular and about the scheduling optimization in general. To achieve these results our work is divided in some areas:
  • Using virtual machines to create custom farms confiuration to make real launch of jobs.
  • Using a simulator (the MAUI simulator) to simulate both these "virtual farms" and our real farm.
  • Build a set of metrics to evaluate how much our configurations works well (both real and simulated)
  • Validate the simulator (using montecarlo techniques)
  • Build an infrastructure for large scale simulation of many changing configurations.
  • Build simulations analysis tools.
  • Build tools to evolve scheduler configurations via GA (Genetic Algorithm)
Go to
Status: completed
Also involved: none

Power supply controller board
Web page not (yet ?) available
Status: Active   Role: co-creator and Technical coordinator
Also involved: Riccardo   On the behalf of: Physics Dept. and INFN Perugia

Dynamical Domains
"Dynamical Domains" is a project in which an application (called manager) is able to interact with a batch system and to run a set of different kind of domUs according to given rules on top of a pool of dom0. This is useful when for example you have very different computational tasks which requires completely different operating systems. Instead of compiling compatibility libraries, solve dependencies etc, you run a dedicated virtual machine for each task.
The manager have to pay attention to and manage various things:
  • The dom0s status, capabilities, networking and type (It has a disk ? It is via NFS ? etc)
  • The list of domU types and their characteristics (
  • Their requirements (How much RAM and processors they need ? What is the way of booting: local disk, file, via iSCSI, via NFS, etc ?)
  • The status of one or more batch system and its jobs.
  • The migration of domUs if necessary and possible
  • The high availability of services running on the domUs
Go to
Status: Active Role: Creator and technical coordinator
Also involved: Flavio   On the behalf of: Physics Dept. and INFN Perugia

Metrix
Metrix is an integrated monitoring system, it collect metrics and store them in a DBMS. It is made by 7 parts:
  • A sendmetrix program that send UDP packets containing the value of a paticular metric to the server.
  • A receivemetrix program the collect the data and store it to the DBMS.
  • The DBMS itself. Most of the databases operations are made within it using stored procedure and triggers. Even the matrics manteinance configuration are stored in the DBMS.
  • The web frontend written in perl is used to administer the system and view the values.
  • An agent server and client that can check metrics current status. It is used to raise allarms or make actions.
  • An information server and client used for external visualization systems.
  • Similar server-client couple to control the system.
The key idea of Metrix is to use some advanced feature of DBMSs such as views, stored procedure and triggers, to arrange data in a different way from an usual central logging system. An example can be the temperature of a room (it is in production in the Computer Science Laboratory of the physics department) taken in some points of the room and then using a view to give the average temperature. Other use may be datacenter monitoring, system log archivial etc. Another key idea is to keep the system much simple as possible so to put it everywhere. The temperature reading system for example is build around a FOX-board (an embedded Linux system) with a 1-wire bus.
Go to
Status: completed
Also involved: none

Camelet
Camelet is a juvenile project written in Quick Basic 4.5. I made it while doing the last year of high school (or the year before). It is a physics application which draw the 2D electric field of a given charge distribution.
You can choose up to ~ 50 charges and it draw the force field. You can also load, save and print configurations.
I tried to make a little experiment at school with some iron dust and arbitrary charges (i have photos somewere) to see if simulation matches with the real images.
Go to
Status: completed
Also involved: none

Cammag
Cammag is a juvenile project written in Quick Basic 7.1. I made it while doing the last year of high school. It is a physics application which draw the 3D magnetic field of a given current distribution.
It takes a config file which describe the currents distribution, plot the currents in a 3D space and open an interactive interface from which the user may choose some points in the space. Starting from these point cammag will draw the field.
For this application i created a mini 3D motor later used also in other projects
Go to
Status: completed
Also involved: none

Curvat
Curvat is a juvenile project written in Quick Basic 4.5. I made it while studying classical mechanics at the first year of university. It is an application which draw curvature vector of a given trajectory in the space.
It make use of two different other projects:
  • A 3d motor i wrote for Cammag.
  • Symbol: a symbolic mathematics library.
It takes from an input file the parametric rappresentation of the trajectory in symbolic form and some other preferencies like the precision etc.
Go to
Status: waiting
Also involved: none

Neural Networks
Web page not (yet ?) available
Status: completed
Also involved: none

Sound
The sound application is a juvenile project, i made it when i was 15. It is a full featured music program written in Turbo Pascal and Quick Basic under DOS.
With it it was possible to write notes on a pentagram and then doing thigs like:
  • Play the song using then PC internal speaker.
  • Load and save songs in its own format.
  • Convert the song in a language between Basic, Pascal or C, to use it for embedding in other applications.
  • Transpose notes.
The program also used a mouse interface and a menu bar, so is possible to:
  • Make cut/copy and paste of parts of songs.
  • Use mouse to put notes.
  • Choose what page of the song you are viewing.
Web page not (yet ?) available
Status: completed
Also involved: none

Symbol
Years ago (in 1994) i frequently used a math program called "derive" to make symbolic computation. I thought that it would be nice to have a similar thing within my programs so i started writing a symbolic math library. At that time i did not know that a thing called "functional programming" ("Lisp") exists, but looking at the code today the library i wrote is a micro functional language to manage mathematical formulas.
The code evolved across different versions and languages expecially:
  • Quick Basic 4.5 - MSDOS
  • Quick Basic 7.1 - MSDOS
  • Turbo C++ 3.0 - MSDOS
  • Borland C++ 2.0 - OS2
  • Borland C++ 4.5 - WIN32
  • GCC - FreeBSD 2.0
  • GCC - Linux 2.X
I used the library as mathematical backend in many other projects, some of which are described in details in this pages.
Here is a list of some of the use i made of it in other projects:

Project name Project purpose Used features
Curvat 3d drawing of the curvature vector given a trajectory Input of the trajectory in symbolic form - Symbolic derivative - Numerical solve
Exterrg Errors propagation Symbolic derivative - Numerical solve
Solver Differential equation solver Symbolic derivative - Numerical solve
Zeros Parallel functions zeros finder (PVM) Numerical solve
Implic Parallel Implicit equation solver (PVM) Symbolic derivative - Numerical solve

The library will be obsolated by MEL since one of its library will do the same work.
Web page not (yet ?) available
Status: completed
Also involved: none

Implic
Web page not (yet ?) available
Status: completed
Also involved: none

Sdrotol
Web page not (yet ?) available
Status: completed
Also involved: none

Solver
Web page not (yet ?) available
Status: completed
Also involved: none

Zeros
Web page not (yet ?) available


Return to projects

Best viewed at 1024x768 under *NIX or superior (if you find a browser) - Mirko Mariotti - @ - 2010