Rocksclusters website

Updating Rocks 7.0 for Spectre/Meltdown Vulnerabilities

Thu, 04 Jan 2018 23:00:00 +0000

The Spectre/Meltdown security vulnerabilites affect (nearly) all hardware and is addressed by OS updates. This is not a Rocks-specific issue, but Rocks-based systems are vulnerable. See the Centos List Archive for specific information on the Security Update

The broad brush of how to approach this:

Create an updates roll with rocks create mirror
add this roll to your current rocks distribution with rocks add roll
enable this roll rocks enable roll
rebuild the distribution in /export/rocks/install with rocks create distro
Use yum to update your frontend and then reboot
Reinstall subordinate nodes or run yum -y update on all subordinate nodes

Here are specific commands with mirror close to California. Use a CentOS mirror close to you for better performance

# baseurl=http://mirror.hmc.edu
# osversion=7.4.1708
# version=`date +%F`
# rocks create mirror ${baseurl}/centos/${osversion}/updates/x86_64/Packages/ rollname=Updates-CentOS-${osversion} version=${version}
# rocks add roll Updates-CentOS-${osversion}-${version}*iso
# rocks enable roll Updates-CentOS-${osversion} version=${version}
# (cd /export/rocks/install; rocks create distro)
# yum clean all; yum update

After you have updated your frontend, you can update your compute (or other) subordinate nodes by reinstalling them or updating them via yum. The following gives the “yum update” method. Please note that if you have a reasonably large cluster, it likely is faster to reinstall your compute nodes.

# rocks run host compute "yum clean all; yum -y update"
# rocks run host compute "shutdown -r now"

Rocks 7.0 ZFS Roll Updated

Fri, 08 Dec 2017 19:00:00 +0000

The ZFS roll for Rocks 7.0 has been updated. It addresses an issue at node installation when a new kernel is in rocks distribution (via rocks create distro), but there is no corresponding kmod-spl/kmod-zfs rpm to match the new kernel.

New installations from the current Rocks central server will automatically use the updated roll.

Existing installations should

download the updated zfs roll roll iso. (you should validate its md5sum)
add this roll to your current rocks distribution with rocks add roll zfs-linux*iso
rebuild the distribution in /export/rocks/install with rocks create distro

No further action is needed after you have updated the roll.

Rocks 7.0 is Released

Fri, 01 Dec 2017 16:29:00 +0000

The latest update of Rocks codename Manzanita is now released. Manzanita is a 64-bit only release and is based upon CentOS 7.4. The Rocks-supplied OS rolls have all updates applied as of December 1, 2017.

Please see the Downloads Page to get started.

Release notes are available.

You can visit Rocks source code github.

Rocks 6.2 is Released

Mon, 11 May 2015 18:47:49 +0000

The latest update of Rocks codename Sidewinder is now released. Sidewinder is a 64-bit only release and is based upon CentOS 6.6 The Rocks-supplied OS rolls have all updates applied as of May 10, 2015.

Please see the Downloads Page to get started.

Release notes are available
Support for ZFS has been updated to version 0.6.4.1.
HTCondor roll (former Condor) is at release 8.2.8
Also included is support for perfSONAR, where cluster builders can decide to install the full GUI (recommended for a standalone perfSONAR host) or just the command tools. Customizing what is installed for perfSONAR gives four attributes that control which elements of perfSONAR are installed on hosts.
New to 6.2 is the ability to reconfigure the fully qualified domain name of your cluster (FQDN). There are some caveats to the process.
When building a frontend on networks with jumbo frames, the cluster builder can specify the mtu on the “build” command line.

You can visit Rocks source code github

Bash Vulnerability in CentOS

Thu, 25 Sep 2014 03:24:43 +0000

Dear Rocks Community,
There is a particularly troublesome vulnerability in bash for which RedHat and CentOS published fixes today (24 Sep 2014).

The description of the bug can be found at the following URLs
https://securityblog.redhat.com/2014/09/24/bash-specially-crafted-environment-variables-code-injection-attack/
https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2014-6271
http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2014/q3/650

The following recipe should enable you to update every node in your cluster. This is tested on Rocks 6.1 and 6.1.1.
On your frontend:
on 6.1:

yumdownloader --enablerepo=updates --destdir=/export/rocks/install/contrib/6.1/x86_64/RPMS/ bash

on 6.1.1:
yumdownloader --enablerepo=updates --destdir=/export/rocks/install/contrib/6.1.1/x86_64/RPMS/ bash

Then,
cd /export/rocks/install rocks create distro rocks run host % "yum clean all; yum -y update bash"

Notes:

the run host command will attempt to run on all hosts (even if you have switches). You can be more precise if you just have a frontend and compute nodes with rocks run host frontend compute "yum clean all; yum update bash"
the version of the bash rpm should be bash-4.1.2-15.el6_5.1.x86_64.rpm. Note the _5 in the version name. The build date is 24 Sep 2014.
by copying the updated rpm into your distro, any future re-installs of nodes will automatically install the correct version.

Rocks 6.1.1 (Sand Boa) is now available

Wed, 16 Apr 2014 04:20:51 +0000

The latest update of Rocks codename Sand Boa is now released. Sand Boa is a 64-bit only release and is based upon CentOS 6.5. The Rocks-supplied OS rolls have all updates applied as of April 14, 2014. This includes updates for the OpenSSL Heartbleed.

Please see the Downloads Page to get started.

Release Notes are available
Support for ZFS has been updated to version 0.6.2
Condor is now HTCondor roll is at release 8.0.6
Also included is a new roll called fingerprint that dynamically determines dependencies of compiled code on both Rocks and non-Rocks systems

Many thanks for all those who beta-tested this version of Rocks. Special thanks to John Zaitseff and Trevor Cooper for their code contributions.

Service Pack Roll for Rocks 6.1 Released

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 23:24:08 +0000

This fixes a number bugs/errors/omissions in Rocks 6.1 (Emerald Boa). All new clusters should be built including the service pack roll. No further action is required when installed on a new cluster.

The roll is also designed to be applied to existing clusters, requiring only a reboot of the head node when complete. The service pack is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures.

Please follow the installation instructions.

The Service Package fixes several problems, noted here. Direct Downloads of the service pack rolls are:

32-bit service pack (MD5 Checksum: 944982f6da6c9cb94ff93bee24df0f9f)
64-bit service pack (MD5 Checksum: 6ea52482d89f82a74a6a06ee48b725c7)

To maintain compatibility with installed clusters, the base OS rolls are unchanged. The Jumbo rolls (which include all basic rolls) have been updated to include the service pack roll.

Rocks 6.1 (Emerald Boa) for i386 and x86_64 Released!

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:28:44 +0000

The latest update of Rocks codename Emerald Boa is now released. Emerald Boa is available for CentOS 6.3 (Rocks 6.1). Rocks 5.6 will be released when CentOS 5.9 becomes available The Rocks-supplied OS rolls have all updates applied as of November 27, 2012.

Please see the Downloads Page to get started. Emerald Boa is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures.

Release notes are available.
Support for ZFS has been added.

Many thanks for all those who beta-tested this version of Rocks.

Rocks 6.1 (x86-64) Beta (Emerald Boa) Available

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 20:36:11 +0000

Rocks 6.1 is now available for Beta testing. Please see Downloads page.

This preview is based upon CentOS Version 6.3 with all updates as 21 October, 2012 applied.

Some of the new features/updates of Rocks 6.1:

Two-factor authentication is supported using google authenticator
Internal ssh authentication is now host-based
A frontend can be installed using a single partition
ZFS on Linux roll now available. Based upon the ZFS on Linux rc11. Note ZFS on linux is a “source” roll.
Support GPT partition tables for drives > 2TB
Improved IPMI documentation
rocks create distro speed improved by removing redundant checksum calculation
Infiniband (Mellanox) configured in the HPC roll with subnet manager running on frontend
SGE roll updates to GE-2011p1
Condor roll updated to 7.8.5

Rocks Mamba (5.5/6.0) is Released

Thu, 10 May 2012 04:33:03 +0000

The latest update of Rocks codename Mamba is now released. Mamba is available for both CentOS 5.8 (Rocks 5.5) and CentOS 6.2 (Rocks 6.0). The Rocks-supplied OS rolls have all updates applied as of May 7, 2012.

Rolls use the same code base but are compiled on the different version of Operating Systems.
Please see the Downloads Page to get started. Mamba is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. Release notes are available.

Many thanks for all those who beta-tested this version of Rocks.