Base Users Guide

(PDF version)

Table of Contents
Preface
1. Overview
2. Attributes
3. Installing a Rocks Cluster
3.1. Getting Started
3.2. Install and Configure Your Frontend
3.3. Install Your Compute Nodes
3.4. Upgrade or Reconfigure Your Existing Frontend
3.5. Installing a Frontend over the Network
3.6. Enabling Public Web Access to Your Frontend
4. Defining and Modifying Networks and Network Interfaces
4.1. Networks, Subnets, VLANs and Interfaces
4.2. Named Networks/Subnets
4.3. Host Interfaces
4.4. Virtual LANs (VLANs) and Logical VLAN Bridges
4.5. Configuring IPMI interfaces
4.6. Networking Configuration Examples
5. Customizing your Rocks Installation
5.1. Adding Packages to Compute Nodes
5.2. Customizing Configuration of Compute Nodes
5.3. Adding Applications to Compute Nodes
5.4. Configuring Additional Ethernet Interfaces
5.5. Compute Node Disk Partitioning
5.6. Creating a Custom Kernel RPM
5.7. Enabling RSH on Compute Nodes
5.8. Hostbased vs. Key-base SSH Authentication
5.9. Adding a New Appliance Type to the Cluster
5.10. Adding a Device Driver
5.11. Extending DNS
5.12. Changing the Root password
5.13. The insert-ethers command line
6. Community Resources
6.1. Access to Rocks Source Code
6.2. All Past Rocks Releases
6.3. Email Discussion List
7. Administration Examples
7.1. Introduction to the Rocks Command Line
7.2. Boot Order and PXE First
7.3. Support for PXE First
7.4. Forcing a Re-install at Next PXE Boot
7.5. Inspecting and Changing PXE Behaviour
7.6. Working with and Modifying Network Configuration
7.7. Reinstall All Compute Nodes with SGE
8. Advanced Tasks
8.1. Managing the Firewall on the Cluster Nodes
8.2. Enabling Two-Factor Authentication with Google Authenticator
8.3. Flashing BIOS on Compute Nodes Using PXE
8.4. Adding a Login Appliance to Your Cluster
8.5. Channel Bonding Interfaces
8.6. Frontend Central Server
8.7. Cross Kickstarting
8.8. Adding Kernel Boot Parameters
8.9. Controlling Bootloader Parameters
8.10. System Update
8.11. Reconfigure a Cluster
9. Command Reference
9.1. add
9.2. config
9.3. create
9.4. disable
9.5. dump
9.6. enable
9.7. help
9.8. iterate
9.9. list
9.10. open
9.11. remove
9.12. report
9.13. run
9.14. save
9.15. set
9.16. swap
9.17. sync
9.18. update
A. Frequently Asked Questions
A.1. Installation
A.2. Configuration
A.3. System Administration
B. Release Notes
B.1. Release 6.2 - changes from 6.1.1
B.2. Release 5.6/6.1_sp1 - changes from 5.6/6.1
B.3. Release 5.5/6.1 - changes from 5.5/6.0
B.4. Release 5.5/6.0 - changes from 5.4.3
B.5. Release 5.4.3 - changes from 5.4
B.6. Release 5.4 - changes from 5.3
B.7. Release 5.3 - changes from 5.2
B.8. Release 5.2 - changes from 5.1
B.9. Release 5.1 - changes from 5.0
B.10. Release 4.3 - changes from 4.2.1
B.11. Release 3.2.0 - changes from 3.1.0
B.12. Release 3.2.0 - changes from 3.1.0
B.13. Release 3.1.0 - changes from 3.0.0
B.14. Release 3.0.0 - changes from 2.3.2
B.15. Release 2.3.2 - changes from 2.3.1
B.16. Release 2.3.1 - changes from 2.3
B.17. Release 2.2.1 - changes from 2.2
B.18. Release 2.2 - changes from 2.1.2
B.19. Release 2.1.2 - changes from 2.1.1
B.20. Release 2.1.1 - changes from 2.1
B.21. Release 2.1 - changes from 2.0.1
B.22. Release 2.0.1 - changes from 2.0
C. 411 Secure Information Service Internals
C.1. Using the 411 Service
C.2. Structure
C.3. 411 Groups
C.4. Plugins
C.5. 411get Configuration File
C.6. Commands
D. Changes to Rocks Security Infrastructure
D.1. Rocks Password Infrastructure
D.2. Rocks Secure Attribute Infrastructure
E. Kickstart Nodes Reference
E.1. Rocks Base Nodes
F. Rocks® Copyright and Trademark
F.1. Copyright Statement
F.2. Trademark Licensing
G. Common Licenses
G.1. Artistic License
G.2. Apache v2.0
G.3. GNU General Public License v1
G.4. GNU General Public License v2
G.5. GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1
G.6. GNU Library General Public License v2
G.7. Python Software Foundation License v2
H. Package Licenses
H.1. anaconda
H.2. ant
H.3. coreutils
H.4. cvs
H.5. eGenix mx
H.6. FireFox
H.7. gawk
H.8. gd
H.9. graphviz
H.10. kudzu
H.11. libxml2
H.12. libxml2doc
H.13. mysql
H.14. ncurses
H.15. numarray
H.16. Numeric
H.17. perl
H.18. perl tk
H.19. pexpect
H.20. phpMyAdmin
H.21. POW
H.22. pygtk
H.23. python
H.24. rcs
H.25. readline
H.26. tidy
H.27. wget
List of Tables
1-1. Summary
1-2. Compatibility
2-1. Roll Attributes
3-1. Frontend -- Default Root Disk Partition
5-1. Compute Node -- Default Root Disk Partition
5-2. A Compute Node with 3 SCSI Drives
List of Figures
F-1. Rocks® logo
List of Examples
5-1. Change the root password of a single compute host
C-1. filter_content
C-2. pre_send
C-3. post
D-1. Plugin code for fake_svc_pw - fake.py