Setting up the hosting service

First we generated a key pair and netlet descriptor for a new hosting service called hos01. That created the files listed. The XML boot file is a netlet descriptor for the hosting service which allows people to run netlets it. In fact the Hospitality application is a distributed hosting service, and no more. It simply allows several nodes to work together to provide a service, and that service is netlet hosting. The other files are a public/private key pair to secure the hosting service. It allows us to ensure our Hostpitality's future warrants and descriptors (i.e. the hosting service's future warrants and descriptors) are signed.

Next we generated another descriptor. This for a descriptor which provides telnet access into the hosting service for admin purposes. We have specified that the access should be on port 2000. This is a very small and simple application so it doesn't bother with keys.

The final step in the setup is to generate SAS files and corresponding keys. We have labelled our SAS application sas01. You might want to change it to for own name.

The XML boot file is a netlet descriptor allowing us to run the SAS, and of course we have the key pair. The file sas01.xml is a launch descriptor, which allows us to start off SAS via the command line launcher application.

If we look at the netlet descriptors we find they are very large; this is because they contain all their own JARs serialised into them. It would be better to reference them by URL and download them, but at that stage in the proceedings there is nowhere to do that from. On the other hand, the SAS launch descriptor is quite small. It refers to its JARs as files on the local file system.

Why don't the netlet descriptors contain local file references? Because they need to run inside nodes, and nodes could be anywhere in the world; they don't usually run on our local machine. So why can the launch descriptor use local file references? Because it is read by the launcher console which runs on a local machine and which turns it into a netlet descriptor with no local file references.