Hi Jeremy It's not entirely clear what you mean by a grid, but in the academic sense of the word we have been using OpenPKG for a while to do manage software installation in a Grid-related project. See http://clarens.sourceforge.net/index.php?intro+cvs
Basically we use an 'instantiation' of OpenPKG (which is only provided in source form) combined with a package installer based on YUM (http://www.linux.duke.edu/projects/yum/) called 'clump'. We make some changes to OpenPKG-provided sources, including enabling shared libraries because we don't need to support any brain-dead OSes. I don't know what the state of AIX is in that respect. Also, all our packages are built to be relocatable, so that they are installable independent of what the root of the OpenPKG installation was. Cheers Conrad On Wed, 2004-02-18 at 10:59, Ralf S. Engelschall wrote: > On Wed, Feb 18, 2004, Jeremy Redburn wrote: > > > I am exploring possibilities for managed installation and removal of > > software on a heterogeneous grid, mostly consisting of Linux and AIX > > machines. > > Just already in advance: because we still do not have any access to any > AIX box, the status of OpenPKG on AIX is unknown. Although OpenPKG 2.0 > CORE packages could work on it to some extend without having to patch > things. If you have a recent AIX version and can afford giving us access > (non-privileged access is fine for the major CORE package porting) we > are happy to port OpenPKG to AIX. > > > While I am somewhat interested in what apps are currently > > packaged, > > For this see ftp://ftp.openpkg.org/current/SRC/. We have currently 698 > applications in OpenPKG CURRENT packaged from which 473 are released > these days in OpenPKG 2.0. > > > I am more interested in learning about the capabilities of > > OpenPKG in general. > > Well, OpenPKG as of today is mainly about _packaging_ software, not > _managing_ it, i.e., although we are very proud of the quality of > our packages, the management layer currently mainly conists of RPM > itself. And RPM is limited to dealing with single packages, it does no > high-level tasks... > > > For example, is it possible to store all packages on > > a central server that manages the packages installed on all the various > > nodes? > > It is possible, but not out-of-the-box with the RPM based functionality > we have. There are APT and Synaptic, openpkg-tool and other addons which > already provide higher level features. But I think starting with the > forthcoming OpenPKG Tool Chain ("openpkg-tools") we the first time will > be able to really provide higher level management features. But > this requires some more months of development. > > > How does the dependency resolver work? > > RPM itself does not dependency resolving, it only knows the directly > dependent packages of a package, not the transitive ones. "openpkg-tool" > already can calculate the transitive dependencies, including building > from source. APT also can calculate the transitive deps, but mainly > support binary packages only. > > > If I uninstall a package, > > will OpenPKG notify me of any remaining packages that relied on that > > package? > > Yes, this is already covered by RPM itself. It complains > if you want to remove a package on which others depend. > > > What facilities, if any, are there to package closed-source > > software (Oracle, DB2, WebSphere, etc.)? > > Well, the same as for packaging open-source software. We just treat the > vendor binaries of the closed-source software as "sources" and place > them into our source RPMs, although during the "build" step there is > obviously nothing really to build ;-) But keep in mind that such large > applications like Oracle and DB2 are usually not reasonable to package, > except for perhaps their client part (see our "oracle-barebone" package > for such an example). > > Ralf S. Engelschall > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > www.engelschall.com > > ______________________________________________________________________ > The OpenPKG Project www.openpkg.org > Developer Communication List [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Conrad Steenberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- Conrad Steenberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ______________________________________________________________________ The OpenPKG Project www.openpkg.org Developer Communication List [EMAIL PROTECTED]
