2021/10/15 下午6:51 Assignment 3
https://myuni.adelaide.edu.au/courses/64834/assignments/233894 1/5
Assignment 3
Due 25 Oct by 16:59 Points 100
Assignment 3 – Paxos
Marks
For undergraduates, the marks awarded for this assignment are worth 30% of the total mark for DS. For
postgraduate students, the marks awarded for this assignment are worth 20% of the total mark for DS.
PLEASE NOTE: If your code does not compile and run the awarded mark is an automatic zero. Our
expectation is that you are able to code and submit a tested and working copy of your code. There will
not be any partial marks and you are expected to debug and fix errors and test that your code works on
the Linux image at University (CATS machines or ssh remotely to uss.cs.adelaide.edu.au ).
Assignment Description
Objective
To gain an understanding of consensus and voting protocols in the presence of failures of one or more of
the participants.
Welcome to the Suburbs Council Election!
This year, Suburbs Council is holding elections for council president. Any member of its nine person
council is eligible to become council president.
Member M1 – M1 has wanted to be council president for a very long time. M1 is very chatty over social
media and responds to emails/texts/calls almost instantly. It is as if M1 has an in-brain connection with
their mobile phone!
Member M2 – M2 has also wanted to be council president for a very long time, except their very long
time is longer than everybody else’s. M2 lives in a remote part of the Suburbs and thus their internet
connection is really poor, almost non-existent. Responses to emails come in very late, and sometimes
only to one of the emails in the email thread, so it is unclear whether M2 has read/understood them all.
However, M2 sometimes likes to work at Café @ Bottom of the Hill. When that happens, their responses
are instant and M2 replies to all emails.
Member M3 – M3 has also wanted to be council president. M3 is not as responsive as M1, nor as late
as M2, however sometimes emails completely do not get to M3. The other councilors suspect that it’s
2021/10/15 下午6:51 Assignment 3
https://myuni.adelaide.edu.au/courses/64834/assignments/233894 2/5
because sometimes M3 goes on retreats in the woods at the top of the Suburbs, completely
disconnected from the world.
Members M4-M9 have no particular ambitions about council presidency and no particular preferences or
animosities, so they will try to vote fairly. Their jobs keep them fairly busy and as such their response
times will vary.
How does voting happen: On the day of the vote, one of the councilors will send out an email/message
to all councilors with a proposal for a president. A majority (half+1) is required for somebody to be
elected president.
YOUR TASK:
Write a program that implements a Paxos voting protocol for Suburbs Council President that is fault
tolerant and resilient to various failure types, some of which are shown in the above. Communication
happens strictly via sockets. You are responsible for the message design.
Assessment
Your assignment will be marked out of 100 points, as following:
10 points – Paxos implementation works when two councillors send voting proposals at the same
time
30 points – Paxos implementation works in the case where all M1-M9 have immediate responses to
voting queries
30 points – Paxos implementation works when M1 – M9 have responses to voting queries suggested
by the profiles above, including when M2 or M3 propose and then go offline
20 points – Testing harness for the above scenarios + evidence that they work (in the form of
printouts)
10 points for the quality of your code:
Code Quality Checklist
Do!
o write comments above the header of each of your methods, describing
o what the method is doing, what are its inputs and expected outputs
o describe in the comments any special cases
o create modular code, following cohesion and coupling principles
Don’t!
o use magic numbers
o use comments as structural elements (see video)
o mis-spell your comments
o use incomprehensible variable names
2021/10/15 下午6:51 Assignment 3
https://myuni.adelaide.edu.au/courses/64834/assignments/233894 3/5
o have long methods (not more than 80 lines)
o allow TODO blocks
Bonus
10 points – Paxos implementation works with a number ‘n’ of councilors with four profiles of response
times: immediate; medium; late; never
50 points – (you can use these points in this assignment, or in any other subsequent assignment) –
Fast Byzantine Paxos implementation that works when councilors lie, collude, or intentionally do not
participate in some voting queries but participate in others.
Handin
Use the Websubmission system.
IMPORTANT If your code does not compile and run the awarded mark is 0. For details on how to
submit this exercise read through the steps of this assignment.
Procedure for this Assignment
Step 0: Getting to know Subversion
Subversion, also known as svn, is a powerful version control system to help maintain a coherent copy of
a project that can be worked on from multiple locations. We will use Subversion as the handin
mechanism throughout this course. Click here (http://www.cs.adelaide.edu.au/docs/svn-instr.pdf) to
learn about the features of interest to us.
Step 1: Creating the assignment directory in your svn repository
Current versions of the svn client program.
Open a terminal window on your machine, and cut-and-paste the following command:
svn mkdir –parents -m “assignments” https://version-control.adelaide.edu.au/svn/aXXXXXX/YYYY/s2/ds/
assignment3 (https://version-control.adelaide.edu.au/svn/aXXXXXX/YYYY/s2/ds/assign1)
This command will create an empty directory named YYYY/s2/ds/assignment3 in an svn repository that
we have set up for you on the machine version-control.adelaide.edu.au. Your svn repository is called
https://version-control.adelaide.edu.au/svn/aXXXXXXX/
Note: Replace XXXXXXX with your student ID and YYYY with the four digits representing the year we
are in.
Old versions of the svn client program.
http://www.cs.adelaide.edu.au/docs/svn-instr.pdf
https://version-control.adelaide.edu.au/svn/aXXXXXX/YYYY/s2/ds/assign1
2021/10/15 下午6:51 Assignment 3
https://myuni.adelaide.edu.au/courses/64834/assignments/233894 4/5
NOTE Older versions of the svn client, (pre 1.5), do not support the –parents option. If you are using an
older client, the following explicit steps must be used to create the YYYY/s2/ds/assignment3 directory in
your svn repository. If a directory already exists and you attempt to recreate it, you will receive an error
message complaining about MKCOL.
Create the YYYY directory if it does not exist.
svn mkdir -m “assignment 0” https://version-control.adelaide.edu.au/svn/aXXXXXXX/YYYY (https://ver
sion-control.adelaide.edu.au/svn/aXXXXXXX/YYYY)
(https://version-control.adelaide.edu.au/svn/aXXXXXXX/YYYY) Create the YYYY/s2 directory if it does
not exist.
svn mkdir -m “assignment 0” https://version-control.adelaide.edu.au/svn/aXXXXXXX/YYYY/s2 (https://
version-control.adelaide.edu.au/svn/aXXXXXXX/YYYY/s2)
Create the YYYY/s2/ds directory if it does not exist.
svn mkdir -m “assignment 0” https://version-control.adelaide.edu.au/svn/aXXXXXXX/YYYY/s2/ds (http
s://version-control.adelaide.edu.au/svn/aXXXXXXX/YYYY/s2/ds)
Create the YYYY/s2/ds/assignment3 directory.
svn mkdir -m “assignment 0” https://version-control.adelaide.edu.au/svn/aXXXXXXX/YYYY/s2/ds/assignme
nt3 (https://version-control.adelaide.edu.au/svn/aXXXXXXX/YYYY/s2/ds/assign1)
Step 2: Checking out a working version of your assignment.
In your home account, change to a directory above the one where you want to place your working files
for this assignment. Then type:
svn checkout https://version-control.adelaide.edu.au/svn/aXXXXXXX/YYYY/s2/ds/assignment3 ds-YY-s2-as
sign3
A new directory called ds-YY-s2-assign3 will now be created in your current working directory. The
contents of this now become a working-copy of the files for all assignments for this offering of Distributed
Systems. Note that this working copy contains hidden sub-directories needed by svn to operate correctly.
Note that you can have more than one working copy of a project. For example you could have one
working copy at home and one at university and you can use svn to help keep them in sync. See the svn
documentation (http://www.cs.adelaide.edu.au/docs/svn-instr.pdf) for details on how this can be done.
However, for now, we will assume you have just the one working copy.
Step 3: Saving your files in your repository
The assignments require you to edit and create files. If you create a new file or directory that is part of
your assignment you must add it to the list of files managed by svn. You can add a file, Test.java, to the
https://version-control.adelaide.edu.au/svn/aXXXXXXX/YYYY
https://version-control.adelaide.edu.au/svn/aXXXXXXX/YYYY
https://version-control.adelaide.edu.au/svn/aXXXXXXX/YYYY/s2
https://version-control.adelaide.edu.au/svn/aXXXXXXX/YYYY/s2/ds
https://version-control.adelaide.edu.au/svn/aXXXXXXX/YYYY/s2/ds/assign1
http://www.cs.adelaide.edu.au/docs/svn-instr.pdf
2021/10/15 下午6:51 Assignment 3
https://myuni.adelaide.edu.au/courses/64834/assignments/233894 5/5
svn repository by typing:
svn add Test.java
Note that the directory containing the new file must already have been added to svn.
As you work on your assignment, you should commit your changes early and often. That is, you should
regularly ask svn to copy changed files in your working copy to your repository. To commit your files to
the repository you change to the directory containing the working copy of your files and type:
svn commit -m “meaningful message about what I just changed.”
Note, that the message after the -m in the line above can be anything. However, it should be relevant to
the state of the project at this moment. Also note that running commit is the only way your repository will
get to know about the latest versions of your files. When we mark your submission we will look at what
has been committed to your repository and, also, how often and what times you committed to your
repository.
There are two major benefits to be gained by maintaining an up to date copy of your assignment in the
svn repository. Firstly, svn can act as a backup mechanism. If you accidentally lose a file you can retrieve
it from the svn repository. Secondly, when you post questions on the forums the lecturer(s) can access
your svn repository and give you more helpful answers.
Step 4: Assignment Submission
The next step is to submit your assignment using the Computer Science Web Submission System
(https://cs.adelaide.edu.au/services/websubmission/) .
You will need to submit:
Your code
Your testing harness + evidence that the above tests work
A readme file containing instructions about how to compile and run your code
By now you have written your assignment, committed your changed files to the repository along the way
and thoroughly tested them. The Web Submission System will not mark your assignment but will perform
some limited checks using the current versions of your files in your repository. When you attempt to
make a new submission you will be presented with an assessment cover sheet. This includes a link to
your repository so you can check what files you are submitting. The cover sheet also includes a
declaration that you are submitting your own work.
Note that, if the testing highlights some errors then you can always edit your files, commit them and
make a new submission using the Web Submission System.
https://cs.adelaide.edu.au/services/websubmission/