Curvature is an interactive visualization tool and dashboard for Openstack clouds. It uses javascript and is written using the Rails framework. It leverages Javascript libraries like D3.

In order to install the correct version of ruby (1.9.3) we recommend using RVM simply type into a terminal:

curl -L https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable --ruby=1.9.3 --gems=rails

If curl is not installed run:

sudo apt-get install curl

In order to now use rvm restart your terminal and change your terminal preferences to run command as login shell. If using gnome-terminal in Ubuntu instructions on how to do this can be found here https://rvm.io/integration/gnome-terminal

If you run into any problems, it is most likely that you need to install the SQLite3 development packages.

sudo apt-get install libsqlite3-dev

In the curvature directory run:

bundle install

After buundle has run successfully initialize the databse with:

rake db:create  
rake db:migrate

Using a text editor of your choice open /config/curvature.yml

Replace the OpenStack Keystone IP Address and Port with the location of the Keystone Server in your cluster and save the file.

To start the server in development mode make sure you are in the curvature root directory and run:

rails server

By default the service will start on port 3000 but you can customize this with:

rail server -p myport

Replacing myport th the desired port number.

You can also run in daemon mode with:

rails server -d

Logs will be saved to /log/development.log

The project is built roughly as two distinct components, the Rails server, and our HTML5 frontend.

The Rails server is responsible for handling all API calls to OpenStack itself, a required step for same-site-security issues. It also stores cookie information for user login, but apart from that the server stores no infomation on the state of OpenStack itself and acts simply as a pass through.

The HTML5 interface is what you see when loading the system in the browser, it is built with no refreshes in mind preferring instead to Ajax data in on the fly. All deployment logic is built here (waiting for dependencies to go up and keeping track of state), and is built 100% asynchronously.

The directory is built like any other Rails project (which you probably know before jumping into this). Areas of particular interest.

/config

• Contains all configuration files, most importantly curvature.yml and routes.rb

/app/controllers

• Contains the controllers for handling the REST requests.
• Subdirectory OpenStack encapsulates

/app/models

• Contains rails model for the cookies named Storages, the file here defines the data structure for the model.

/app/views

• Contains our HTML page templates for logins and our main page is in the /visualisation directory along with partials for better DRY programming.

/app/assets

• Contains subdirectories for stylesheets and JavaScript which are acted on my sockets (the asset pipeline) to compile CoffeeScript and SCSS into their true forms.

/public

• Contains all static elements. In the current state only the error pages exist in here, for example 404.html

• ropenstack - A ruby Gem which abstracts the OpenStack APIs into an OO form.
• git
• ruby 1.9.3
• rails
• curl