make Medley docker configuration fit into EaaS framework

[masinter]

This is a 'wish list" feature.

https://eaasi.gitlab.io/eaasi_user_handbook/ offers "Emulator as a Service" using Docker to allow people to experience emulated machines. Investigate and see if we can offer Medley on Docker to fit into their framework.

[AbeJellinek]

Huh. This is interesting, and it fits well into our goal of having on-demand Medley instances available online, but it seems focused on providing minimal emulation environments to bare-metal systems. Would we run Linux + X inside one of these emulators? Is it suited for that, or are containers a better fit for the job?

[masinter]

i discovered after I wrote that "Want.." that EaaSi is still in early stages. I'm discovering how the preservation community is thinking about emulation and Medley/Maiko doesn't quite fit. First, we have source code and some of the original developers. Second, we're looking toward modern usability. EaaSi might fit "DarkStar" (the Dandelion emulator) better than Maiko/Medley.

[masinter]

From: software-preservation-network@googlegroups.com On Behalf Of Jessica Meyerson Sent: Friday, August 27, 2021 7:04 AM Subject: [software-preservation] EaaSI August Resource Highlight: Emulation Bibliography

Dear colleagues,

We hope this message finds you all safe, healthy, and thriving. As we ease into September, the Emulation-as-a-Service-Infrastructure (EaaSI) team is happy to share our August Resource Highlight ,”Emulation Bibliography” The Software Preservation Network (SPN) library of community-curated software preservation resources was recently updated with an Emulation Bibliography from Ethan Gates (EaaSI User Support Lead). Highlights from the bibliography include: • Emulation Encounters • Preserving Feminist Media Art on CD-ROM • Emulating Amnesia *Consider contributing your software curation, software sustainability, and software metadata resources to the SPN Library.

EaaSI Resource Highlights are opportunities for the EaaSI team to pluck resources from the past or recent past and recontextualize them in light of the latest activities of the EaaSI Program of Work. Resources range from staff blog posts that connect software curation and emulation, to current events, to capacity building templates that provide structured activities for digital curation practitioners, to influential resources from our recent software preservation past, to reports from our EaaSI partner organizations on their own emulation explorations, and more.

---

MORE ABOUT EAASI The Emulation as a Service Infrastructure (EaaSI) program builds on previous work to apply the Emulation-as-a-Service (EaaS) framework for access and use of preserved software and digital objects. The program is focused on designing and scaling both the services and tooling needed necessary for multiple institutions to configure, share, and access software emulated environments. EaaSI directly complements efforts by the Software Preservation Network and others to address key aspects of software preservation including legal advocacy, research about local software preservation needs, institutional capacity building for software preservation, collection development, professional development and training, and workflow recommendations.

-- Jessica Meyerson Pronouns: she/her/hers Working from Austin, TX Deputy Director | Educopia Institute Cita Press, board member The Maintainers, co-director Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, affiliate

My regular working hours are Monday - Friday, 8am - 4pm CDT, UTC -5. -- Twitter: @softpresnetwork Web: http://www.softwarepreservationnetwork.org/

[masinter]

Ethan Gates wrote in email:

This is very interesting, and thanks for bringing it to my attention. I will raise it with our developers on Emulation-as-a-Service/EaaSI in Freiburg when I can, but at first blush (and from getting up and running with Medley myself in only a few minutes) my impression is that it should be possible to run such environments in EaaSI.

You are correct in your comment in that GitHub thread that something like Dark Star would more directly fit with EaaSI's efforts and environments to date (we already have environments based on LCM+L's ContrAlto), because our focus/assumption for preservation purposes is that full hardware emulation will always become necessary - eventually. However, I see no reason why a VM emulator like Maiko wouldn't also work. If it runs in a Docker container and generates an X window that we can forward into the EaaSI client, I believe it should just be a matter of writing the EaaSI-specific configuration metadata necessary to run in the framework. You can see examples here of our other container-ized emulators if you haven't yet.

The catch is that the Freiburg team is currently near the end of a rehaul of that entire system of managing emulators. The ultimate goal is to make the EaaSI configuration metadata more abstract - exactly to make it simpler to add new emulators to EaaSI, as the current method is still tied very tightly to pieces of the application itself and it's basically not possible to add new emulators without a considerable amount of custom work from the devs. So we probably don't want to try to do this right this moment but it would make a good test case for the new configuration system when it's in production (which, knock on wood, should be later this fall).

If you don't mind, I will circle back to you when I'd be ready to experiment on this with you and talk in more detail. I also wonder if this is something the folks at Computer History Museum would like to see in their EaaSI node; we could coordinate with them. (It was a great disappointment for EaaSI when LCM+L shut down - ever since then, there's not been a lot of discussion or experience in the community regarding environments from the '70s or early '80s, so this would definitely be an interesting use case for us to tackle!)

[masinter]

@fghalasz @ekaltman I wonder if this might also go the other way -- extend oio to work for EaaSi kinds of emulations?

[masinter]

I understand better now the different perspectives... I think the opportunity is best explored by getting different earlier versions of Interlisp running in emulation -- Darkstar dandelion emulator, DOS emulator running Medley for DOS