Rocks v5.2 is released for Linux on the i386 and x86_64 CPU architectures and Solaris for the x86_64 architecture.

Downloads

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

ISO images for the Solaris on the x86_64 architecture can be found here.

New Features

  1. Solaris support for client nodes

    2. With the new JumpStart Roll, one can now install and configure a Linux-based Rocks frontend to "JumpStart" Solaris-based back-end machines.

  2. Attributes

    3. Can assign "attributes" to nodes at four levels: global, appliance type, OS (e.g., Linux or SunOS), and host. An attribute can be accessed in an XML node as an entity. For example, if you assign the attribute "foo" with the value "123" to compute-0-0 (i.e., with the command, "rocks set host attr foo 123"), then in an XML node file, you can access the value of the attribute foo with "&foo;".

    Attributes also enable "conditionals". Using the example above, a "post" section can be optionally executed based on the value of an attribute. For example, if a post section is defined as:

    <post cond="foo='123'">

    The above post section will only be executed if the attribute "foo" is set to "123" for the installing host.

Enhancements

  • OS: Based on CentOS release 5/update 3 and all updates as of June 22, 2009.
  • Base: Anaconda installer updated to v11.1.2.168.
  • Base: Isolated MySQL for the Rocks database under /opt/rocks.
  • Base: Fix for software RAID partitioning.
  • Base: Increase timeout for package downloads when on slow networks (e.g., 100 or 10 Mbit).
  • Base: Converted all 'dbreports' to the Rocks command line.
  • Base: Configure 'MTU' for networks through the Rocks command line.
  • Base: Configure network routes through the Rocks command line.
  • Base: Configure host aliases through the Rocks command line.
  • Base: Added '/var/log/authpriv' to log rotate list.
  • Base: Added 'iburst' flag to NTP configuration on frontend.
  • Base: Added version and release info to vmlinuz and initrd.img to enable cross-kickstarting via PXE and making it easier to host different Rocks VMs on a physical system.
  • Base: Added a YUM configuration file to each node that points to the distribution on the frontend.
  • Bio: Updated biopython to v1.50.
  • Bio: Updated clustalw to v2.0.11.
  • Bio: Updated fasta to v35.4.7.
  • Bio: Updated fftw to v3.2.1.
  • Bio: Updated elph archive in glimmer to v1.0.1.
  • Bio: Updated gromacs to v4.0.1.
  • Bio: Updated perl-Data-Stag to v0.11.
  • Bio: Updated perl-Digest-MD5 to v2.38.
  • Bio: Updated perl-File-Temp to v0.21.
  • Bio: Updated perl-GD to v2.41.
  • Bio: Updated perl-GD-SVG to v0.33.
  • Bio: Updated perl-Graph to v0.91.
  • Bio: Updated perl-HTML-Parser to v3.60.
  • Bio: Updated perl-HTML-Tagset to v3.20.
  • Bio: Updated perl-PathTools to v3.30.
  • Bio: Updated perl-SOAP-Lite to v0.710.08.
  • Bio: Updated perl-SVG to v2.49.
  • Bio: Updated perl-SVG-Graph to v0.02.
  • Bio: Updated perl-Scalar-List-Utils to v1.21.
  • Bio: Updated perl-Storable to v2.20.
  • Bio: Updated perl-Text-Iconv to v1.7.
  • Bio: Updated perl-URI to v1.38.
  • Bio: Updated perl-XML-Parser to v2.36.
  • Bio: Updated perl-XML-Twig to v3.32.
  • Bio: Updated perl-XML-Writer to v0.606.
  • Bio: Updated perl-bioperl to v1.6.0.
  • Bio: Updated perl-libnet to v1.22.
  • Bio: Updated perl-libwww-perl to v5.826.
  • Bio: Updated phylip to v3.68.
  • Bio: Updated reportlab to v2.3.
  • Bio: Updated t_coffee to v7.81.
  • Ganglia: Updated to v3.1.2.
  • HPC: Updated OpenMPI to v1.3.2.
  • HPC: Updated MPICH2 to v1.0.8p1.
  • HPC: Updated stream to v5.9.
  • Java: Updated java to v1.6.0_13.
  • Java: Updated jdk to v6 update 13.
  • Java: Updated antlr to v3.1.
  • Java: Updated jboss to v5.0.1.GA.
  • Java: Updated jogl to v1.1.1.
  • SGE: Updated to v6.2 update 1.
  • Viz: Support for single, dual and quad display nodes.
  • Viz: Chromium support for 32-bit and 64-bit applications.
  • Viz: Added CUDA driver. Users can optionally run CUDA programs on the tiled-display nodes.
  • Viz: User updatable nVidia driver. Makes it easy for users to refresh the nVidia driver without having to wait for an updated Viz Roll.
  • Xen: Using libvirt instead of 'xm' command line programs to start/stop VMs.
  • Xen: Fix to ensure all routes are active after Xen is started.
  • Xen: Allow VM disk to be backed by a physical disk partition.
  • Xen: Fix 'rocks set host vm' command to allow users to resize a VM's disk.
  • Xen: Use threading in the 'rocks add cluster' command to decrease the time to add a virtual cluster.