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

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

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.

Downloads

• Jumbo Roll (Area51, Base, Bio, Ganglia, HPC, Java, Kernel, OS disk 1 and 2, SGE, Web Server, Xen) x86_64 (dvd)
• Individual Rolls
• MD5 checksums

Rocks-a-Palooza IV will be held at Atkinson Hall on the campus of UCSD in La Jolla on May 13th and 14th 2009.

There will be one main session focused on Rocks internals. Participants will leave with an understanding on how to tune Rocks to fit their specific requirements.

In addition, there will be a poster session where Rocks community members can share their creativity and cleverness.

The preliminary agenda can be found here.

Attendance is free for participants from non-profit organizations.

Since this meeting is supported by the NSF, attendees from for-profit entities can attend, but they must become sponsors of the event. The minimum sponsorship is $1,000 which includes two passes to the event. Additional passes cost $500 each.

We encourage all to attend to learn the latest in Rocks and to meet users and developers from the Rocks community.

Registration is limited to 100 and registration will be closed on May 1st (to allow us to accurately budget for meals, snacks and other costs).

To register or to enter a poster, send your request to:

rap@rocksclusters.org

The torque roll is now ready for download.

Get it from ftp://ftp.uit.no/pub/linux/rocks/torque-roll/5.1.0

The roll contains the latest torque and maui releases:

• Torque v2.3.6
• Maui v3.2.6p21

The source code of the roll can now be accessed from a public mercurial repository: http://devsrc.cc.uit.no/hg/torque/

The Rocks way of installing the roll is as usual to reinstall your frontend and compute nodes, but you can also use the chain of commands to install a new roll on an existing frontend (with or without a previous version of the roll):

# rocks add roll /path/to/torque/roll.iso
# rocks enable roll torque
# rocks create distro
# kroll torque | sh
# reboot

Comments are greatly appreciated.

The release of the Bio Roll includes a new package:

• TIGR Assembler v2

This release also includes a refresh of the following packages:

• Biopython v1.49
• ClustalW v2.0.10
• NCBI Tools 6.1 with Blast v2.2.19
• T_Coffee v7.04
• Fasta v35.4.3
• Gromacs v4.0.2
• Phylip v3.68

ISO images for the Bio Roll can be found on the Downloads page.

Installation and configuration instructions can be found here.

This release of the Condor Roll includes a refresh of the Condor base software to version 7.0.5.

ISO images for the Condor Roll can be found on the Downloads page.

Installation and configuration instructions can be found here.

This roll contains executables and configuration utilities to deploy a PVFS2 file system on a Rocks cluster.

The roll includes PVFS2 v2.7.1.

ISO images for the PVFS2 Roll can be found on the Downloads page.

Installation and configuration instructions can be found here.

Clustercorp has released the following Rolls for Rocks v5.1 (x86_64 architecture):

• Mellanox OFED Roll

The Mellanox OFED Roll includes OFED 1.3.1. This Roll replaces the Cisco OFED Roll for Rocks 5.0 and below.

• Intel Developer Roll

The Intel Developer Roll includes C, C++, and Fortran 10.1.018, Intel Cluster Toolkit 3.1.1.003, and MKL 10.0.5.025.

• PGI Roll

The PGI Roll includes Portland Group’s C, C++, and Fortran Compilers 7.2-5.

• TotalView Roll

The TotalView Roll includes TotalView Debugger 8.6.0-2.

• Absoft Roll

The Absoft Roll includes the Absoft Pro Fortran 10.1 Compiler Suite and associated libraries.

See the Clustercorp Rocks+Rolls page to obtain the Rolls.

Additional Rolls for Rocks 5.1 (including NVIDIA CUDA) will be released by Clustercorp soon!

Please send feedback and questions to feedback@clustercorp.com

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

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

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

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

5. Distribution moved to /export/rocks/install

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

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.

Downloads

• Jumbo Roll (Area51, Base, Bio, Ganglia, HPC, Java, Kernel, OS disk 1 and 2, SGE, Web Server, Xen) i386 (dvd)
• Jumbo Roll ((Area51, Base, Bio, Ganglia, HPC, Java, Kernel, OS disk 1 and 2, SGE, Web Server, Xen) x86_64 (dvd)
• Individual Rolls
• MD5 checksums

Installation Documentation

Installation documentation can be found here.

If you plan on building virtual clusters, then start here.

There is only one significant change: when the Kernel/Boot CD boots, at the “boot:” prompt, you need to type “build” (not “frontend” as in the past releases).

Notes on One of the New Features

• Virtual Clusters Support

If you include the Xen roll, you will now be able to configure virtual clusters using Rocks.

Preliminary documentation on how to configure and install virtual clusters can be found here.