[Feature Request] Provide multi-user support on cluster or server

[tim-sch-gif]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Since one of the more recent versions of ARCitect I wasn't able to use it anymore on our cluster (I don't have admin privileges). The error message was due to chromium-sandbox helper and ports assignment. Solution was to ask the support to install it on the cluster with the .deb file. Issue is that I now have to always message our support to update the version. And only one user at a time can use it. Here is the explanation of the support:

ok, die Software als solche ist erstmal installiert.

ARCitect ist aber nicht wirklich tauglich für Multi-User-Systeme:

[bf@garth:~]$ arcitect
Authentification service listening on port 7890
Swate service listening on port 7891

Das Programm öffnet da zwei Ports, die nicht nur für Dich, sondern auch
für alle anderen zugreifbar sind. Und wenn jemand anderes die Software
gestartet hat, wird sie nicht für Dich laufen, da die Ports schon "in
use" sind.

Describe the solution you'd like
I just wanted to notify you of this "issue" so that maybe you could make updating on a cluster easier and maybe also allow for multiple user to use it a the same time.

Describe alternatives you've considered
I could have used it with the no sandbox flagg, but I've read that it might be a security concern to I tried to not do that.

[JonasLukasczyk]

Thank you for bringing this up and this is indeed a design issue of ARCitect. The software is targeted for desktop / single user environments. Of course having the data on a shared medium is a common use case so we need a good solution for this in the future.

For now, I recommend the following setup: mount the cluster’s shared storage on a client machine and run ARCitect on that client. As long as the client has access to the shared storage, ARCitect will too, which allows you to work with the data remotely. On a Linux client, the shared storage can, for example, be mounted using sshfs. From ARCitect’s point of view, the mounted storage behaves like a local filesystem.

Could you please confirm whether your cluster supports client-side mounting? Specifically, we intend to mount a directory from the cluster onto a client machine, so that the client (and applications running on it) can access the shared storage as if it were local.

[Brilator]

Not sure, if I understand (both of you) correctly.
From what I understand, the issue is less about working on the same ARC (on a server), but rather for using a single ARCitect installation on one server.

[JonasLukasczyk]

yes, but running ARCitect on a server (single or multiuser) is not a good idea as it is not build for that. Besides technical limitations, there are also security concerns (open ports etc). So imho the best solution is to incorporate the remote file system locally if possible. Other workarounds are much more complicated and will require a redesign of ARCitect core functionality.

[tim-sch-gif]

"For now, I recommend the following setup: mount the cluster’s shared storage on a client machine and run ARCitect on that client. As long as the client has access to the shared storage, ARCitect will too, which allows you to work with the data remotely. On a Linux client, the shared storage can, for example, be mounted using sshfs. From ARCitect’s point of view, the mounted storage behaves like a local filesystem."

I tried to do so and I can access my home folder via samba file sharing, but I cannot access project folder so far. I will continue to try.

I was technically able to circumvent the issue earler with the sandbox-helper and the ports by setting the --no-sandbox flag when starting ARCitect, but I did not want to put the cluster at risk. And now I think it might no longer be possible.

The issue is that I can access certain files only on our cluster, without downloading them all onto my working laptop. And on this cluster I don't have admin rights to install software. Last year, I think around ARCitect version 1.0 I was able to run it without troubles, but since it has changed that is no longer possible. The support of the cluster installed the software for me, but they also noticed that ARCitect always assigns the same ports, meaning that multiple user cannot work at the same time. Which is not too big of a proble, as not many people use it (3 including me). The real issue is that when I used ARCitect, that whenever I filled in any cell it would throw that error message I had made a separate issue on.

I like the idea of the remote file usage, if it ends up working for me.

I'll continue to try to get the drive to be mapped.

Cheers

[JonasLukasczyk]

Thank you for trying this. I will keep an eye on this issue and I hope mounting the remote file system locally solves the problem.

If your cluster supports sshfs (usually the case) then things become much easier. On linux and macos clients this will work out of the box, and it seems there is even a way to get this to work on windows:
https://medium.com/@danielmarinomirallestaset/mounting-linux-fs-in-windows-10-using-sshfs-e29c7ca81c87