I know that it is possible to add some look&feel customizations to ganglia
as this is what ROCKS does when they integrate it into their disto. How about
some minor customization that takes the user to a reboot node(s) page or
extra functionality portal page from the ganglia monitor pages?
--
Steven A. DuChene

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Squyres <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Nov 22, 2005 12:55 PM
To: OSCAR-devel List <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [Oscar-devel] Fwd: [OSCAR feeback]

On Nov 22, 2005, at 9:45 AM, Lombard, David N wrote:

>>> 1. First is due to the nature of the disk boot model.  There's no
> low
>>> level way to know why a node doesn't boot.  If one doesn't come up
>>> then putting a monitor on it is required.  I don't know what you
> would
>>> do about it.  It's pretty low level.  Finding a third-party solution
>>> and bundling it in would be nice if possible.
>
> Some sort of remote console access is needed.  Could be as simple as a
> serial line with BIOS console redirect, one of those KVM-over-IP
> thingies, or SOL (Serial Over LAN, an IPMI 2.0 feature).  At the end of
> the day, hardware must provide a part of the answer.

I agree.  But are there 10% solutions that OSCAR can offer?  I think 
that's the real question here.  Is there any kind of feedback -- 
however rudimentary -- that the node can provide to give some kind of 
indication about why it failed?  Perhaps even the following messages:

1. I failed, but if you reboot me, it might work
2. I failed, but if you reboot me, it should work
3. I failed, and have no idea why.  You need to attach a monitor and 
find out.

Something simple like that -- even if the predominant answer we can 
give is #3, that could be helpful.

>>> 2. The problem that can be resolved more easily is the post-install
>>> configuration.  Oscar is really good at the initial install but try
>>> doing something like building the latest kernel from source and
>>> distributing it to the nodes.  It's not easy.  We have a lot of
> things
>>> that need to be installed from source.  What I do is chroot to the
>>> image, make the changes and do a cpushimage.  It works but it's not
>>> oscar friendly.  It would be nice if I could do something more in
> the
>>> GUI.  I understand that updating the image is going to be text and
>>> manual but I don't believe the gui lets me push the updated image.
>>> Keep in mind that I don't want to reformat the disk every time.  I
> may
>>> just want to push a single updated binary out.
>
> I don't know that this is "not oscar friendly" as we provide the tools,
> just not the gui.

Yes, I think that's what he meant.  Very definitely a user perspective 
here; he doesn't know/care how OSCAR is implemented internally 
(although he does use c3 and the other tools that OSCAR provides).

> But, should be eminently doable from that spiffy new
> portal--well, it is directly doable from the current portal's C3 tools
> page, but a more purpose-built variant to push/get an image would be
> useful.  We need the localboot/install magic for PXEBOOT manageable
> there, too.

I think that's the goal here -- it would be nice if some kind of gui 
(even a web-based thingy) could do some of these common tasks 
easily/trivially.  Perhaps a shiny button "re-push image X out to the 
relevant nodes."

>>> 3. Also, ganglia is a nice monitor but it would be nice to be able
> to
>>> do things like reboot a node from the gui.  I know it can be done at
>>> the command line.
>
> I don't see this as a ganglia feature--as a portal feature, this would
> be fine as would the above item.

Agreed.  I think this stems from the user perspective of "I can see all 
this stuff in Ganglia, but I can't *do* anything to/with it -- it's 
just reporting.  But it seems like a natural place to let me *do* 
things as well."

-- 
{+} Jeff Squyres
{+} The Open MPI Project
{+} http://www.open-mpi.org/



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