Contest Image

The contest image refers to the LiveCD image that we use to run SCUSA each year at each site. It is based on Fedora 30 and by default is completely stateless. That is, it can be run on an existing system without changing the os of hard drive.

See Site Hosting Requirements for machine requirements

The contest image when booted will connect back to the central SCUSA servers to find out what is currently going on with contest. We require that the desktops used in the competition have internet access and do not block outgoing connections to the internet. When the contest starts we will block internet access from the teams with firewall rules in the contest image.

During the image boot a loading screen will come up and wait until the image has 1) pulled the latest config and 2) connected to the contest control network and in the upper right hand corner of the screen during booting the node will print it’s UUID

If the node is unable to set up the contest environment then it will not boot completely. While at the SCUSA pre-boot screen you can press d which will show debug information about the node’s network as well as recent log output for contest operations. You can also press ESC to exit the pre-boot screen entirely and bypass the check’s that are waiting for the node to completely boot.

You will have to boot the image from the ISO in order to create USB keys, here we outline two such methods:

Booting the Image from DVD

  • Download the image
  • Burn image to DVD
  • Boot image
  • log in with team/team

Proceed to Install to USB.

Booting the Image in Virtual Environment

This requires a virtual hypervisor, we will be using VirtualBox which can be downloaded for free. After installing, you will need to create a virtual machine:

  • Select New Virtual Machine
  • Name can be SCUSA
  • Type is Linux
  • Version is Red Hat (64-bit)
  • RAM should be set to 2048 MB minimum
  • Do not add a virtual hard drive
  • Go to Settings for that virtual machine you just created
  • Click Storage
  • Click the CD Drive and then the CD icon and browse to the SCUSA LiveCD ISO
  • You can also select “Live CD/DVD”
  • Boot the Virtual Machine
  • Insert your USB drive into your computer

Note

Make sure that it is unmounted from your host operating system

  • When the virtual machine is booting, there should be a number of icons in the bottom right, and one looks like a USB cable, click on it and select your USB drive to mount it in the Virtual Machine
  • Continue below to Install to USB.

Note

Make sure that when the install is complete that you unselect the USB drive from the Virtual Machine

Install to USB

Once the image has been booted as a LiveCD there is the option of installing it to a USB drive. This will set up a persistent home area so that code is preserved if the image is rebooted.

Note

Requires a 8GB USB drive minimum and will delete all data on the USB drive

  • Log in with team/team
  • Become root su -
  • Run /usr/local/scusa/sbin/scusa-liberate_to_disk -d /dev/sdX

Change /dev/sdX to the location of the USB key, usually /dev/sdb but check the output of fdisk -l and lsblk to make sure the total size matches

Printing Support

Printing is done on UNIX systems by means of the CUPS application. The easist way for us to configure printing right now is to boot the image and log in as root and configure printing manually.

First, log in to the image as root (not as the team user). If you do not have the root password reach out to Jason.

Navigate to the GUI printer setup under System -> Administration -> Printing in the menu.

After printing has been configured and you have verified that it works, we need to upload the configuration so that we can persist the configuration on reboots of the contest image.

To upload, open up Terminal as root and run:

scusa-sosreport

and let Jason and Isaac know the UUID that gets printed or at least when you did the report.