RE: [Oscar-users] Upgrading OSCAR Cluster

[OSCAR]

Title: Message

Thanks Bernard.  I think this is what I'll end up doing long term.  We have another cluster running OSCAR 4 and RHEL 3, with the support for CentOS in later OSCAR versions we'll definitely be switching to that.

 

But, in the mean time I need to limp this cluster through the end of the project it's currently for.  Do you have any thoughts for the other thread I posted?  I'm running RH9 with OSCAR 3 and I am getting the exact issue discussed in that thread.  Unfortunately, starting over isn't an option.  I need to get these nodes loaded to test the new kernel before I push it out to the rest of the cluster....but for some reason the nodes don't get the right kernel when they pxe boot.  I can't find where they are getting it from...it doesn't appear to be the one in /tftpboot because that's the one I used to successfully the load the cluster initially.  (it's the boel_binaries one discussed in the thread). 

 

Any and all thoughts are appreciated.  Thanks in advance for your support.

 

John

-----Original Message-----
From: Bernard Li [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Posted At: Thursday, February 09, 2006 1:42 AM
Posted To: OSCAR
Conversation: Upgrading OSCAR Cluster
Subject: RE: [Oscar-users] Upgrading OSCAR Cluster

Hi John:

 

There is currently no upgrade path for OSCAR - i.e. if you want to upgrade, you'll have to re-install the OS (on the headnode), re-install OSCAR, re-create the images and re-deploy your compute nodes.

 

You don't have to do this on the production cluster, if you have 2 spare computers (hopefully with similar hardware as your cluster nodes), you can build a test cluster and create/tweak your images before you perform this on your production cluster.  You probably also want to backup your user files, fstab as well as other configuration settings from Ganglia and/or TORQUE, etc.

 

CentOS 3 is based on RHEL3 and should be quite similar to Red Hat Linux 9 - if you want a "newer" distribution I would recommend at least CentOS 4 (that is provided that your other software work under this OS).  Do note that CentOS 4 runs 2.6 kernel, whereas both CentOS 3 and RHL9 runs 2.4 kernel.

 

Cheers,

 

Bernard

---

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of OSCAR
Sent: Wed 08/02/2006 12:04
To: oscar-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: [Oscar-users] Upgrading OSCAR Cluster

We're running OSCAR 3.0 on RedHat9.  We're running into several issues with some of our software and the solution seems to be upgrading to a newer linux distribution.  This cluster is shared by multiple projects so I want to minimize the impact as much as possible.  What I'd like to do is upgrade OSCAR, use it to build an image based on a newer distribution, tweak the image with all the changes we've made for our software, and then deploy it. 

I'm just starting to look at this, so if anyone has suggestions, please let me know.  Can anybody point me to upgrade instructions?  Is it as simple as just installing the latest oscar version and proceeding like a new install?  Will the installation notice that I already have a cluster deployed and pick up those settings?

Any advice on whether to upgrade the headnode OS?  Should I do this first?

I plan to use CentOS 3, primarily for compatibility with other systems we use.

All advice is greatly appreciated…I'll start digging around for this information myself now too.  :) 

Thanks,

John Artman
CCNA, MCP, RHCE/CT
Senior Systems Engineer
ENSCO Inc.

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