Olive (Open Library of Images for Virtualized Execution)
Rui's observations:
- Seems to focus on streamed execution of legacy software.
- Has overlap with DAP. Might be usable for extractors that require a special OS/software environment. Software only available for Linux.
What is it:
A collaborative (originally between Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and IBM Research) project seeking to establish a robust ecosystem for
long-term preservation of software, games and other executable content. Born at CMU, Olive addresses the current gap in preservation technology by providing a curated environment for the preservation and distribution of executable content.
-- From olivearchive.org
Executable content examples: simulation models, tutoring systems, expert systems, data visualization tools, company's product information page that are dynamically generated that customizes the content and appearance at run time.
Goals
- Enable libraries to achieve their mission of preserving scholarly records
- Provide a platform for preserving, searching, extending, and distributing executable content
- Establish a workflow for this preservation
- Determine the obstacles to preservation and distribution
- Retain executable content in its original state so that end users may interact with it freely
How It Works
- Executable content is preserved in a full VM to ensure long-term compatibility
- Relevant VM archives can be found using content and metadata searches
- VMs are streamed using the ISR technology.
Like Internet videos, users may begin interacti ng before a full VM is downloaded. Streaming technology offers immediate VM access by sending only the data required for execution.
- Users may save VM changes to their own computers and apply them to subsequent launches.
Use cases:
- Academic
Executable journal articles, complex datasets, research tools and
content, databases and navigation tools, software and its
dependencies.
- Public Sector
Modify legacy software on old hardware for:
Government databases and datasets, security technology, intelligence
software and systems, special-use hardware preservation.
- Private Industry
Help maintain legacy hardware and software for clients in sensitive
hardware configurations, such as:
Game preservation for future development or analysis, software
execution on deprecated systems, system testi ng and maintenance for
legacy infrastructure, stable and controlled environment for special
hardware and software.
Software
- Client: VMNetX.
Runs on Linux, using the open-source KVM VM monitor. Can execute
VMs directly from any web server; no special server software is
required. On GitHub. License: GPL v2.
https://github.com/cmusatyalab/vmnetx
- Server: not released, plan to release under GPL v2.
Client releases: VMNetX
0.4.4 - bugfix release, 2014-05-31.
0.4.3 2014-03-05.
0.4.2 2013-12-20.
0.4.1 2013-11-07.
Funding:
- IMLS National Leadership Grant (Institute of Museum and Library
Services, a government agency)
Oct 2012, $497k over 2 years.
Goal: To understand what types of content can be ingested into Olive
and to determine how executable content archive can fit into
existing trusted repository standards such as OAIS, OCLC, CRL, JISC.
- Sloan Foundation Grant.
Jan 2013. $400k over 2 years.
Goal: To develop the technical framework for Olive, to plan for an
effective organizational structure to sustain the archive and
provide access to executable content.
Test cases:
- Great American History Machine
Built by Prof. David Miller at CMU in the 1980’s, provides GIS for early census data
- ChemCollective
Award winning educational software built by Prof. David Yaron
- Mystery House
Apple II game for which experimental metadata was generated under IMLS-funded Preserving Virtual Worlds 2
- Doom
Popular PC game with heavy graphics released in 1993
- Information Systems
Special issue of the Elsevier journal which will include executable content
CMU team:
- Prof. Mahadev Satyanarayanan (Satya), in CS
Architect of Andrew, Coda files systems
- Gloriana St. Clair
Dean Emerita of University Libraries, CMU
- Erika Linke
Associate Dean of University Libraries, CMU
- Jerome McDonough
Associate Prof, UIUC
- Anita de Waard
VP of Research Data Collaborations, Reed Elsevier
- Daniel Ryan
Curator for Executable Content, CMU
...
Three (3) ideas:
- ISR (Internet Suspend/Resume). A technology to stream VMs over
Internet. -- From CMU.
Disk is demand-paged over the network.
- A technique for indexing and searching VM image contents. Searching
relies on signature matching, instead of user-specified metadata.
- A technique to incrementally composing a VM image.