Rocks v5.1 is Released
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
- Support for Virtual Clusters
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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.
- Can build rolls outside of Rocks source tree
- Can reconfigure a compute node's network without rebooting
- Distribution moved to /export/rocks/install
- Fine-grained control over the "boot" and "install" kernel for Xen VMs
All roll building support files are under /opt/rocks/share/devel.
Rocks commands were added to support this. See the documentation for the procedure.
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.
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.