slightly less.  Also unfix the previous "fix."

tree for v4 planetlab node support.  Currently, we support both v3 and
v4 NMs via a little wrapper, and we dist out different versions of the
rootball depending on NM version.  Also updated various parts of libplab
to log success and failure from interactions with planetlab nodes to the
db, and there are beginnings of support for that in plabmonitord.in.

database as primary, but are recording all slice state changes on the new
PLC database so the switchover should be seamless.

  * GNUMakefile.in: add mod_PLC4.py.in
  * mod_PLC4.py.in: more API changes.
  * libplab.py.in:  add support for saving state at two PLCs, one primary,
      one "compat".
  * mod_PLCNM.py.in: change URL to access old xmlrpc server since
      PlanetLab went ahead and changed DNS.

to PLC 4.  I haven't added the new NM functionality yet, so that stuff is
stubbed out.

(@prefix@/etc/plab/plab.pw).

plab logging enhancements.

timing information for various RPCs is now logged to
/usr/testbed/log/plabtiming.log.  This info will be useful for extracting
trends for the various plab nodes, and in calculating reliability and
timing metrics.  These could be used, for e.g., to pick nodes that tend to
come up more quickly.

This update also squelches much of the python backtrace noise when plab nodes
fail to setup correctly (can be turned on with debug flag).  Instead, failures
are summarized on a single line.

Oh, and pay no attention to the aspect behind the curtain!  Yes, you may
groan and moan if you wish - I'm using aspects to help do the logging.  I
find this to be a really slick way of wrapping several functions!

Minor bugfix.

Fix up plab renewal for current scheme.  We must now go out to each sliver
individually and ask for it to be renewed.  I've added a new script to be
run out of cron that will run through and attempt to renew all active slices.
If a node cannot be renewed with its slice and comes sufficiently close to
it's recorded expiration (currently two weeks out), mail will be sent to
testbed ops warning about this situation.  Note that there will only be
one email message per slice, containing a list of all nodes at risk for
expiration.  The plab renewal daemon will no longer run as a result of
this change.  Note that this is sort of a hack.  The better way would be
to have the daemon perisistenly try to renew nodes that have failed until
success, but that will take more work, and I might farm it off to the
plab monitoring daemon anyway.

Pass experiment description through to Planetlab as the slice description
when creating a slice.  Also mention the Planetlab AUP and importance of
providing an accurate slice description in the documentation.  The ez
interface also briefly mentions the importance of the slice description.

Fix stupid little mistake in last commit.

Change version check code to throw exception if it can't contact the
remote pl_conf.

Add a bit of additional output info, and fix a little bug in rc.inplab

Slice renewal updated to work with new PLC API.  Emulab-created plab slices
are no longer in danger of falling out from under our users!

The revived Plab interface is here!

Lots of updates to the plab backend, including improved plab <-> elab node
id translation and update handling.  Includes support for the current PLC
API, and the new pl_conf node manager interface API.  Several more db library
routines were ported from the perl library to the python one to support the
new code (mostly the node_id tracking stuff).  Fixes to the client side and
also a rootball creation cleanup (binaries removed from the CVS repo).

There are also enhancements to the experiment view page for experiments
including plab nodes: site and widearea hostname are now displayed along
with the other node information.

Note that the way setup timeout for vnodes is calculated has been changed a
bit.  Instead of using a hardwired base timeout, the base timeout is now
based on the reload_waittime database field, which comes from the 'OS'
(e.g., FBSD-JAIL, RHL-PLAB) the vnode runs.

The default max duration for a plab slice created through the plab_ez interface
is set to 1 year, and linktest is currently disabled and hidden through
the ez interface.

There is still work to do, but this checkin brings with it a functional
plab portal!

finished up (waiting for resolution of the service slice bootstrapping
issue).

* the python mysql client returns a datetime object rather than a string
  sequence - must convert it to string

* PLAB moved the URL to their programmatic API - adjusted on our end.

* PLAB changed format of expiration time in listSlices() RPC from a
  datetime string to seconds since the epoch in UTC.

There is still an outstanding issue that I have mailed plab support about:
The listSlices() RPC is only returning the first entry in the list of slices
we have allocated at PLC (the same call used to grab all slice entries).
This is causing us to fail on renewal for the unlisted slices.

A bunch of plab interface updates that I've worked on over the last while.
Most significant is the revamped renewal code that tries to push the leases
out to the policy defined maximum of two months during each iteration through
the plabrenewd daemon loop.

- added python lib code to get SiteVars
- Fixed up comments to reflect current code operation
- revamped renewal code (again)
  - changed all times to UTC for consistency
  - removed node-level renew invocation in favor of slice-level
    - if backend module requires node-level renewals, it must handle them
      itself in the slice-level function
    - better reporting
- set admin bit if creating svc slice
  - other updates to ensure admin bit is preserved
- update rootball handling function naming
- updated tryXmlRpcCmd() to accept two new sets of strings, and a callback
  function.  The strings represent Faults that either 1) indicate success,
  or 2) indicate failure.  The callback is another optional error handling
  method, allowing the caller to decide how to treat individual faults as
  they see fit.
- updated the backend module code to take advantage of the new string
  match status identifiers in tryXmlRpcCmd()
- completely revamped slice renewal code in mod_PLC backend
  - compare against real lease expiration data gathered direct from PLC
  We used to just infer from our originally requested lease length
  - warn when our notion of expiration doesn't match PLC's
- added agent caching and lease expiration info caching to mod_PLC
  backend.

* Node.__copy() now uses rsync instead of weird 'dd' pipe
  - can do since sudo now works from square one after sliver instantiation

* Made fixsudo and addgroup operations in emulabify() non-fatal
  - setup sometimes works even if they don't (esp. on dirty sliver)

* option parser fixes

* Shutup stupid warning messages from remote commands (tcgetattr, sudo lecture)

* incompatible option handling and use removed from gen purpose libs
* Global PLC mutex implemented, but currently disabled
* plabmonitord parallelization cut in half (for now)

I'm still very frustrated with option handling/passing.  Needs more thought,
but the primary issue is that there really isn't a global variable space in
python (global to file, yes, but not global to interpreter invocation).

I've learned that __builtin__ might work for this, but it seems hacky..

* Added comments
* Added Emulab copyright
* made mod_PLC handle the "not assigned" error case in freeNode()
  - optimization and less log clutter.
* bug fix in plabmonitord (ISUP decection)

* Changed the way options are parsed in the python scripts so that modules
  can easily add and use their own options independent of top-level scripts.

* Added --noIS and --pollNodes module options.

* Added batch option to vnode_setup (degree of parallelization)
  - defaults to 10

* Major updates to plamonitord
  - batches testing, currently to 40

* implemented PLC slice renewal
* restructured daemon code/startup
  - removed getfree daemon (replaced by plabdiscover; run from cron)
  - moved generic daemonizing code into libtestbed (class)
  - created plabrenewd - small script that utilizes daemonizing class
  - removed plabdaemon file.
  - updated bossnode startup scripts
* changed slice prefix - PLC denies permission w/ anything other than "utah"
* Minor semantic changes to module API to be more consistent with other parts.
* Some bug fixes.

* removed unused and not generally useful ping checking
* reorganized node discovery and added node info updating
  - e.g., update IP, SITE, or HOSTNAME when they have changed
  - no longer part of the backend module as this is independent of
    which backend is used; may modularize it due to plab's new "trumpet"
    service, which is basically its node DB available via a decentralized
    transport/API.
* introduced new method of getting node info - use plab sites.xml file
* various other cleanups.

I'll come along for a closer cut in the future.

* Modularized the plab communications 'adaptor' interface and moved the
  dslice- and PLC-specific code into their own modules.

* Wrote an API definition README

* Separated out generic routines from libplab into their own library modules
  (libtestbed.py and libdb.py)

Functionally, not much has changed - this was just a massive re-org with some
other cleanup.  Should be much easier to code up new PLAB interfaces as the
plab folks flail around in their attempt to standardize on something.

XXX: may want to re-think where the generic library modules should go.  If
more python code enters Elab, we'll probably want to move 'em to more standard
locations.

This isn't the end of the cleanup - I would eventually like to go back and
rethink the class structures, beef up the comments, and extend the API.