Welcome, dark overlord!
Here within you will find everything needed to enslave your army of minions!
Our most important tool is the hypnosponge. As you might very well know, any decent overlord needs a hypnosponge for Minion Mind Control (MMC).
With the use of your trusted hypnosponge you will be able to have every enslaved minion do your bidding "out of their own free will".
This code is intended to be used in a setup where one person (the dark overlord) demonstrates some cool Erlang/OTP features to a group of people with computers on the same network.
I have only tested this on Erlang R15B03-1, older versions like R14B may or may not work as expected.
The dark overlord needs to have this code compiled and loaded into an Erlang VM. The minions only need to connect to the overlord node. The necessary minion code will then be loaded into the remote nodes by the overlord node.
$ ./rebar get-deps update-deps compileWe will be starting two master nodes (preferably on different hardware). One will be the overlord, the other his evil twin. If something should happen to our overlord (the horror!), his evil twin would be willing to take his place.
Edit rel/files/vm.args (on both computers) and make sure that the IP address is set correctly so that the minions can reach you.
On the overlord computer this might look like:
-name [email protected]
And on the evil twin computer we may have:
-name [email protected]
Edit rel/files/sys.config and make sure the references to the nodes there are the same as the above. Our sys.config needs to be identical on both computers.
Then generate a release (same command on both computers):
$ ./rebar generateNow we can start an Erlang shell with our apps loaded. Both master nodes have to be started at roughly the same time.
The overlord output may look like this:
$ ./rel/overlord/bin/overlord console
Exec: /dark-overlord/rel/overlord/erts-5.9.3.1/bin/erlexec -boot /dark-overlord/rel/overlord/releases/1/overlord -mode embedded -config /dark-overlord/rel/overlord/releases/1/sys.config -args_file /dark-overlord/rel/overlord/releases/1/vm.args -- console
Root: /dark-overlord/rel/overlord
Erlang R15B03 (erts-5.9.3.1) [source] [64-bit] [smp:8:8] [async-threads:0] [hipe] [kernel-poll:false] [dtrace]
22:35:11.190 [email protected] [overlord_app] <0.57.0> || Starting app: normal
22:35:11.190 [email protected] [hypnosponge_sup] <0.58.0> || Hello from the hypnosponge supervisor
22:35:11.190 [email protected] [hypnosponge] <0.59.0> || Hello from the hypnosponge itself!
22:35:11.191 [email protected] [minion_supersup] <0.60.0> || Hello from the minion supersup
22:35:11.191 [email protected] [hypnosponge] <0.59.0> || The minion supersup (<0.60.0>) has been attached to hypnosponge_sup (<0.58.0>)
22:35:11.191 [email protected] [hypnosponge] <0.59.0> || hypnosponge_sup (<0.58.0>) now has 2 children: [<0.60.0>,
<0.59.0>]
22:35:11.191 [email protected] [hypnosponge] <0.61.0> || Hello from your minion_recruiter
Eshell V5.9.3.1 (abort with ^G)
([email protected])1> application:which_applications().
[{overlord,"A way to demo Erlang/OTP distributed features by turning the laptops of your audience into minions.",
"0.1.0"},
{sudoku,"An Erlang implementation of Norvig's Sudoku solver",
"0.9.0"},
{sasl,"SASL CXC 138 11","2.2.1"},
{stdlib,"ERTS CXC 138 10","1.18.3"},
{kernel,"ERTS CXC 138 10","2.15.3"}]
([email protected])2>
His evil twin:
$ ./rel/overlord/bin/overlord console
Exec: /dark-overlord/rel/overlord/erts-5.9.3.1/bin/erlexec -boot /dark-overlord/rel/overlord/releases/1/overlord -mode embedded -config /dark-overlord/rel/overlord/releases/1/sys.config -args_file /dark-overlord/rel/overlord/releases/1/vm.args -- console
Root: /dark-overlord/rel/overlord
Erlang R15B03 (erts-5.9.3.1) [source] [64-bit] [smp:2:2] [async-threads:0] [hipe] [kernel-poll:false] [dtrace]
Eshell V5.9.3.1 (abort with ^G)
([email protected])1> application:which_applications().
[{sudoku,"An Erlang implementation of Norvig's Sudoku solver",
"0.9.0"},
{sasl,"SASL CXC 138 11","2.2.1"},
{stdlib,"ERTS CXC 138 10","1.18.3"},
{kernel,"ERTS CXC 138 10","2.15.3"}]
([email protected])2>
Note that the overlord app is not running on eviltwin. This will change if the overlord node goes down.
We are starting our VM's using fully qualified names (the -name option as opposed to -sname), so we can use the IP address of the overlord. All connected VM's need to use the same naming type.
If you want to change all references in this demo to short names you might have to ensure that the overlord IP is added to the hosts file of each minion computer, and then use that name instead of the IP address.
Each minion should be able to ping the overlord:
$ ping -c 1 10.1.1.1
PING 10.1.1.1 (10.1.1.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 10.1.1.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.110 ms
--- 10.1.1.1 ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.110/0.110/0.110/0.000 msOnce the above is working you can connect to the overlord node (change the IP addresses of the minion and overlord as appropriate):
$ erl -name [email protected] -setcookie overlord -s net_adm ping_list [email protected]You can enter some shell commands to check if it worked. You should see your overlord in the list of nodes:
(minion@iris)1> nodes().
[[email protected]]
(minion@iris)2> net_adm:ping('[email protected]').
pong
Once your minions start connecting, you will see output similar to the following in your console:
[email protected] [hypnosponge] <0.61.0> || Enslaved node '[email protected]' (remote minion supervisor is <20972.48.0>)
22:37:43.393 [email protected] [hypnosponge] <0.61.0> || minion_supersup (<0.60.0>) now has 1 children: [<20972.48.0>]
22:37:43.465 [email protected] [hypnosponge] <0.59.0> || Minion <20972.50.0> on [email protected] reporting for duty
Now you can use the exported API functions in the overlord module to send commands to your minions, for example:
([email protected])3> overlord:minion_nodes().
([email protected])4> overlord:minion_info().
([email protected])5> overlord:sing().
Our overlord needs his minions to do some very important work for him, like solving Sudoku puzzles. Once you start this, the minions will have a huge CPU load. Not that we care much about them...
([email protected])6> overlord:sudoku_start().
([email protected])7> overlord:sudoku_stats(). %% Do this a few times
While the minions are hard at work, we can see what happens if they crash:
([email protected])8> overlord:minion_crash().
And to stop the madness:
([email protected])9> overlord:sudoku_stop().
We can also see what happens when our hypnosponge crashes:
([email protected])10> overlord:sponge_crash().
Have a look inside overlord.erl for some more exported functions.
Finally, we need to test what happens if an entire node goes down. Kill the overlord node in some ungraceful way (I do ctrl-g followed by q).
The app should failover to the evil twin, and you will be able to see the startup output on the node.
You can bring back the overlord node once you have played a bit on the evil twin. The overlord node should do a takeover, and the app will be stopped on the evil twin node.
“If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.”
— Alan Perlis
Our code is started using the following general order: Release -> Applications -> Supervisors -> Workers
The release ensures that all applications are started at boot time. One if these is our overlord application.
The overlord application starts the hypnosponge supervisor. The hypnosponge supervisor starts the first worker, our hypnosponge.
The first thing that the hypnosponge does after starting up is to ask the hypnosponge supervisor to start another child, the minion supersup. Thy hypnosponge links itself to the minion supersup, so that in the event that one of them dies, they will both be restarted by the hypnosponge supervisor.
The hypnosponge also spawns a minion recruiter, responsible for detecting and enslaving new minions. The minion recruiter and the hypnosponge are linked, so that in the event that one of them dies, they will both be restarted by the hypnosponge supervisor.
The hypnosponge supervisor is now responsible for monitoring 2 processes:
- the hypnosponge
- the minion supersup
The minion supersup is running on the overlord node. It has the responsibility of starting and monitoring the supervisors on the remote minion nodes. As soon as the minion recruiter detects a newly connected node, it will instruct the minion supersup to start a minion supervisor on the remote node.
The minion supervisor runs on the remote minion node. It immediately starts and monitors the minion, which will do the actual work.
If our minion dies for any reason, the minion supervisor is tasked to respawn it.
If the minion supervisor dies, then the minion supersup will know about this and do whatever we configured it to do. Because this link is between different nodes over a network, it could be that the minion supersup gets notified because the entire node went down. If this is the case we do not want our minion supersup to make countless futile attempts at restarting the remote minion supervisor. Instead, the minion supersup will do nothing and just wait for the minion recruiter to detect that the node is up and available for enslavement.
The hypnosponge supervisor will restart any of the following processes, should they die on us:
- The minion supersup
- The hypnosponge
If the hypnosponge supervisor dies the entire overlord node will crash. We can do this by sending a kill signal to the process ID:
([email protected])11> Sup = pid(0,58,0).
<0.58.0>
([email protected])12> exit(Sup, kill).
=ERROR REPORT==== 11-Feb-2013::12:16:49 ===
** Generic server minion_supersup terminating
** Last message in was {'EXIT',<0.58.0>,killed}
** When Server state == {state,
{local,minion_supersup},
simple_one_for_one,
[{child,undefined,minion_makeshift_sup,
{minion_makeshift_sup,start_link,[]},
temporary,5000,worker,
[minion_makeshift_sup]}],
undefined,1,3,[],minion_supersup,[]}
** Reason for termination ==
** killed
true
([email protected])13>
=INFO REPORT==== 11-Feb-2013::12:16:49 ===
application: overlord
exited: killed
type: permanent
{"Kernel pid terminated",application_controller,"{application_terminated,overlord,killed}"}
Crash dump was written to: erl_crash.dump
Kernel pid terminated (application_controller) ({application_terminated,overlord,killed})
If the overlord_app dies the overlord node will also crash:
([email protected])14> App = pid(0,57,0).
<0.57.0>
([email protected])15> exit(App, kill).
true
([email protected])16>
=INFO REPORT==== 11-Feb-2013::12:30:33 ===
application: overlord
exited: killed
type: permanent
([email protected])17> {"Kernel pid terminated",application_controller,"{application_terminated,overlord,killed}"}
Crash dump was written to: erl_crash.dump
Kernel pid terminated (application_controller) ({application_terminated,overlord,killed})
In the two cases above I actually want the evil twin to automatically take over. This does not currently happen. Some investigation is in order...
What does work quite nicely however, is when the Erlang VM is killed.
$ kill -9 25561([email protected])18> Killed: 9
Now the failover happens to the evil twin within our configured 5 seconds:
([email protected])1> 12:38:48.744 [email protected] [overlord_app] <0.80.0> || Starting app: normal
12:38:48.745 [email protected] [hypnosponge_sup] <0.81.0> || Hello from the hypnosponge supervisor
12:38:48.745 [email protected] [hypnosponge] <0.82.0> || Hello from the hypnosponge itself!
12:38:48.745 [email protected] [minion_supersup] <0.83.0> || Hello from the minion supersup
12:38:48.745 [email protected] [hypnosponge] <0.82.0> || The minion supersup (<0.83.0>) has been attached to hypnosponge_sup (<0.81.0>)
12:38:48.745 [email protected] [hypnosponge] <0.82.0> || hypnosponge_sup (<0.81.0>) now has 2 children: [<0.83.0>,
<0.82.0>]
12:38:48.745 [email protected] [hypnosponge] <0.84.0> || Hello from your minion_recruiter
([email protected])1>
As soon as the overlord node is started again it will take over:
$ ./rel/overlord/bin/overlord console
Exec: /dark-overlord/rel/overlord/erts-5.9.3.1/bin/erlexec -boot /dark-overlord/rel/overlord/releases/1/overlord -mode embedded -config /dark-overlord/rel/overlord/releases/1/sys.config -args_file /dark-overlord/rel/overlord/releases/1/vm.args -- console
Root: /dark-overlord/rel/overlord
Erlang R15B03 (erts-5.9.3.1) [source] [64-bit] [smp:8:8] [async-threads:0] [hipe] [kernel-poll:false] [dtrace]
12:46:40.598 [email protected] [overlord_app] <0.56.0> || Taking over from '[email protected]'
12:46:40.598 [email protected] [hypnosponge_sup] <0.57.0> || Hello from the hypnosponge supervisor
12:46:40.598 [email protected] [hypnosponge] <0.58.0> || Hello from the hypnosponge itself!
12:46:40.599 [email protected] [minion_supersup] <0.59.0> || Hello from the minion supersup
12:46:40.599 [email protected] [hypnosponge] <0.58.0> || The minion supersup (<0.59.0>) has been attached to hypnosponge_sup (<0.57.0>)
12:46:40.599 [email protected] [hypnosponge] <0.58.0> || hypnosponge_sup (<0.57.0>) now has 2 children: [<0.59.0>,
<0.58.0>]
12:46:40.599 [email protected] [hypnosponge] <0.60.0> || Hello from your minion_recruiter
Eshell V5.9.3.1 (abort with ^G)
([email protected])1>
On the eviltwin node we see that the application was stopped:
=INFO REPORT==== 11-Feb-2013::12:46:40 ===
application: overlord
exited: stopped
type: permanent
([email protected])1>
I did a lot of the code while reading "Learn you Some Erlang". This is a very cool book, check it out.
Specifically, the following chapters were very helpful:
- http://learnyousomeerlang.com/distribunomicon
- http://learnyousomeerlang.com/building-applications-with-otp
- http://learnyousomeerlang.com/distributed-otp-applications
The overlord and minion artwork comes from a card game called "Aye, Dark Overlord!" by Stratelibri.
They have generously allowed me to use their images, please see the LICENSE file for details.
I take all the blame for the image of the hypnosponge, and will gladly accept a better version from more artistic people than myself :-)