Rocks v5.1 is released for i386 and x86_64 CPU architectures.

Downloads

ISO images for i386 and x86_64 architectures can be found here.

New Features

  1. Support for Virtual Clusters

  2. Virtual frontends and virtual compute nodes are now supported. The network for a VM frontend its VM compute nodes are contained within its own VLAN. A virtual cluster is added with "rocks add cluster fqdn=X ip=Y num-computes=Z". See "rocks add cluster help" for details.

  3. Can build rolls outside of Rocks source tree

    4. All roll building support files are under /opt/rocks/share/devel.

  4. Can reconfigure a compute node's network without rebooting

    5. Rocks commands were added to support this. See the documentation for the procedure.

  5. Distribution moved to /export/rocks/install

    6. No longer require NFS on the frontend to properly host a Rocks Distribution. This will make moving user accounts to an external NFS server easier.

  6. Fine-grained control over the "boot" and "install" kernel for Xen VMs

    7. Rocks commands where added to support this feature. For details, execute: "rocks help installprofile" and "rocks help bootprofile".

Enhancements

  • OS: Based on CentOS release 5/update 2 and all updates as of November 4, 2008.
  • Base: Anaconda installer updated to v11.1.2.113.
  • Base: Increased the / partition default size to 16 GB.
  • Base: Opened the 'www' and 'https' ports to the local public network.
  • Base: In Avalanche Installer, added code to check if a package is requested twice in a row. If it is, we assume the package is corrupted. In this case, we toss the package and retrieve it the package from the frontend.
  • Base: Added Rocks commands to manage the "aliases" table.
  • Base: Added "rocks remove roll" command. Thanks to Brandon Davidson from the University of Oregon for the code.
  • Base: The command "rocks-dist" is replaced with "rocks create distro".
  • Base: Disabled the watchdog for frontend installs that boot off a CD/DVD.
  • Base: Changed boot command from "frontend" to "build". To build a frontend, when you see the "boot:" prompt, now type: "build".
  • Web Server: Wordpress updated to v2.6.1.
  • Web Server: Updated Wordpress theme.
  • Area51: All commands converted to Rocks command line.
  • HPC: Updated OpenMPI to v1.2.7.
  • HPC: Updated MPICH2 to v1.0.7.
  • Java: Fixed a bug in the graph that Java from properly installing on compute nodes.
  • Restore: All files under /export/rocks/install/contrib are now included in the Restore Roll.
  • Restore: All files in /var/named/*local are now included in the Restore Roll.
  • Restore: The frontend's ssh machine keys are now included in the Restore Roll.
  • SGE: Updated to v6.1 update 5.
  • SGE: Added a script to reinstall a cluster by submitting an SGE job.