B.7. Release 5.3 - changes from 5.2

B.7.1. Enhancements

OS: Based on CentOS release 5/update 4 and all updates as of December 15, 2009.

Area51: chkrootkit updated to v0.49.

Base: Anaconda installer updated to v11.1.2.195.

Base: Added support HP's Smart Array controllers (e.g., the 'cciss' driver) in the Rocks partitioning code.

Base: Moved JDK to the Base Roll (the Java Roll has been discontinued).

Base: Added the 'ssh_use_dns' attribute (default setting is 'true'). If set to 'false', then DNS is not consulted when trying to make an SSH connection. This speeds up SSH connections for frontend's that don't have access to a functioning DNS server.

Base: Added the 'Kickstart_DefaultLeaseTime' and 'Kickstart_MaxLeaseTime' attributes to give the user the ability to control their own DHCP lease timeouts.

Base: Added IMPI tools and configuration utilities.

Base: Updated foundation-perl to v5.10.1.

Base: Updated foundation-perl-Tk to v804.028.

Base: Experimental CPAN support. This introduces a utility that lets the user create Rocks RPMs directly from CPAN along with all dependencies.

Bio: Updated Emboss to v6.1.0.

Bio: Updated biopython to v1.52.

Bio: Updated clustalw to v2.0.12.

Bio: Updated fasta to v35.4.9.

Bio: Updated fftw to v3.2.2.

Bio: Updated gromacs to v4.0.5.

Bio: Updated iolib to v1.12.1.

Bio: Updated phylip to v3.69.

Bio: Updated t_coffee to v8.14.

Ganglia: Updated rrdtool to v1.3.8.

HPC: Updated iozone to v3.291.

HPC: Updated iperf to v2.0.4.

HPC: Updated MPICH2 to v1.1.1p1.

HPC: Updated OpenMPI to v1.3.3.

SGE: Updated to v6.2 update 4.

Viz: Updated nVidia driver to v190.42.

Web-server: Updated mediawiki to v1.15.1.

Web-server: Updated wordpress to v2.8.4.

B.7.2. Bug Fixes

Area51: tripwire is now correctly configured on the frontend.

Base: Increase the amount of memory PHP can use from 64 MB to 256 MB. This is essential for viewing Ganglia data for large clusters.

Base: During installation, don't copy over the rocks-cdrom block device file. On most systems, there is no issue, but there are some systems where this code would copy over the entire contents of the CD/DVD if the CD/DVD was still in the tray (which is shouldn't be, because after the rolls are copied to the frontend, the CD/DVD is umounted and ejected).

Base: Set the '--utc' flag when hwclock is called. Without the flag, the localtime is written to the hardware clock. Then, at first boot, the system reads the hardware clock respecting the UTC settings in /etc/sysconfig/clock. So the system time ends up being off by the offset to UTC.

Base: On first boot, Set the number of CPUs for the frontend in the database to actual number of detected CPUs. In the past, this value was hard-coded to 1.

Base: Fix for frontend's that use DNS servers that are configured to return a 'catch all' address for non-existant domain names. Do a reverse lookup to get the IP address. In the previous release, one would see an 'XXX' entry for the IP address of the frontend in /etc/hosts.

Base: Put double quotes around 'option domain-name', otherwise, if the domain name was structured like xxx.yyy, then the DHCP service would not start.

Base: For tentakel, throttle the number of concurrent connections to 100 (useful for large clusters).

Base: Rewrite the pxelinux.cfg files after setting the run/install action in the nodes table (e.g., 'rocks set host installaction ...').

Base: For 'rocks set password', make sure password changing code accesses the Rocks foundation database.

Base: For 'rocks sync host network', make sure to update the static routes file.

Base: Fixed 'insert-ethers --replace'. Before, it correctly removed the node, but then readded it at 'the end' of namespace, that is, it forgot the rack/rank of the replaced node.

Base: Make tentakel more resilient to hanging nodes.

Ganglia: Fix to save all RRD data on frontend shutdown.

Ganglia: Fixes to physical views. Make sure all nodes are positioned in rack/rank order.

Ganglia: Fixes to rediscover all backend nodes after a frontend reboot. Without this fix, if gmond was restarted on the frontend, then it requires restarting gmond on all the compute nodes in order to get metrics to report again.

Kernel: Fixes to preserve the timestamp from RPMs on Rolls that are installed via CD/DVD. Prior to this fix, all RPMS in Rolls that were installed from CD/DVD would have the timestamp of the time when the frontend was installed. This causes issues when trying to update RPMs after the frontend was installed.

SGE: When a host is removed (e.g., 'rocks remove host ...'), make sure the queue associated with that node is also removed.

SGE: Build the DRMAA library with Java support.

Xen: Respect the MTU value of the physical interface when bringing up Xen bridges.

Xen: Fix to enable physical devices (partitions, LVM partitions, etc.) to be used as devices for virtual disks.

Xen: Fix to 'ip' address flag in 'rocks add host vm'. Without the fix, if an IP address was specified on the command line, the command would throw an exception.

Xen: Fix to support for virtual compute nodes that are managed by a physical frontend.