Dream Console User's Guide
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Inspect

The Console can be used to inspect a DRM group, that is an unbounded number of machines considering themselves members of this group. The default group is named 'default', and for the time being it is safe to forget about groups and assume your computer is also in this group. We are going to discuss the window layout of the Console now, because you have to know which information can be found where to inspect the Dream.

Basic Window Layout

Figure 1 shows the basic Console layout, the red numbers mark the following components:

  1. the explorer area where all currently known components are shown: nodes, machines, experiments, islands and agents. 
  2. the working area, it is mainly used to display information flowing in from a the active task specified in the tasklist. 
  3. the tasklist, where you can choose which one of the active tasks performs output in the working area. The active tasks button is marked with an abricot coloured background. 
  4. the main toolbar where you find basic actions like connect, start experiment, and options; the toolbar is completely redundant with the menu, all toolbar actions can also be initiated from there.

console screenshot
figure 1: screenshot of the Dream Console after connecting to a DRM group

If you have started a console and nothing much happens despite from output from the messages task, this means that you are probably not connected to a DRM (Distributed Resource Machine) group. In this case, the leftmost field of the main toolbar (marked with 'DRM:') holds the text 'not connected'.

Getting connected

For connecting, you have two options: either you just try to a predefined DRM group using the default settings, or you use the connection dialog which gives you a lot of options and the possibility to change the default settings.

If you just want to connect and not to change any settings, please activate the menu item Connect to DRM group from the Tools menu or click the connect button (connect button) of the main toolbar. For most users, the default setting will be ok.