"VL-e Proof-of-Concept Distribution - Installation", owner=>"Jan Just Keijser", email=>"janjust@nikhef.nl", footer=>"Comments to Dennis van Dok or Jan Just Keijser.")); ?>
vl-e

Virtual Laboratory for e-Science
The Proof-of-Concept Distribution

PoC R2 Software Installation

This page covers fresh installations of the PoC R2. For upgrading from earlier installations of the PoC, see these notes.

Are you sure you want to install the PoC yourself? It is already available on so make sure that none of these suit your needs before trying to install the PoC.

Table of Contents

Prerequisites

Base OS
The PoC installer is tested and supported on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and 4 derivatives (here collectively called RHEL). These derivatives are rebuilds of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux sources with minimal changes. Such distributions include CentOS and Scientific Linux. Mind that the actual Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution is not free, you need to licence it from Red Hat.

Other RPM based distributions may work, but are not supported.
Java
The PoC R2 distribution depends on the Sun Java SDK 1.5.0 RPM. This package is included in the externals repository of the PoC.

The PoC distribution relies on JPackage 1.6 for several common java packages. The installer will add a link to a JPackage repository.
Note: The gLite 3.1 middleware defaults to JPackage 1.7. For the PoC distribution this is NOT recommended, as one of the required packages, ant, is not packaged properly in JPackage 1.7.
Grid Middleware
The PoC is considered to include the gLite grid middleware that is developed and rolled out by the EGEE project. There is no tight integration between gLite and the PoC, so you can install either, or both. To consider your installation a full-blown PoC grid node you need both, of course.

We have really no control over the releases of gLite, and regrettably neither does anyone else. Currently there are different versions for RHEL3 and RHEL4 with incompatible interfaces.

To disentangle this mess, the PoC installer currently only installs the PoC software, and a separate installer is provided for installing gLite.

Almost automatic installation

The automated PoC installer will take care of the entire installation without asking a lot of questions. This script is the principle way to install and/or upgrade the PoC and this procedure is the most tested. Depending on the speed of your hardware, this may take anywhere between several minutes and an hour. When the installation finishes successfully, you are now the proud owner of a VL-e PoC R2 UI (User Interface).

If anything goes wrong, proceed to the instructions below.

Installation instructions for RHEL3

The package management software to use for RHEL3 derivatives is APT. This is because yum on RHEL3 is inadequate and the gLite sofware must also be installed with APT on this OS. The RHEL4 installation can be done with yum, and that is the preferred way for that OS.

APT must be configured with several repositories, after which the installation is a two-step process: apt-get update to retrieve the package names and metadata from the configured repositories, followed by apt-get install followed by a package name to install the package. APT will resolve the dependencies and install all required packages as well.

Installation step by step:
  1. Install APT
  2. Remove the ant that comes with RHEL3, as it is horribly broken: 
    rpm -e ant ant-libs
  3. Import the GPG keys

    Download the VL-e public key RPM-GPG-KEY-vle or contact us directly. Download the JPackage Project key jpackage.asc.

    Import the keys as root: 

    rpm --import RPM-GPG-KEY-vle
rpm --import jpackage.asc
gpg --import RPM-GPG-KEY-vle
gpg --import jpackage.asc
  4. Add the keys to APT's known vendors.
    Add the following to /etc/apt/vendors.list: 
    simple-key "JPackage"
{
  Fingerprint "1F81C0FBC2B822B3DE1233A45C6CFFF7C431416D";
  Name "JPackage Project (JPP Official Keys) <jpackage@zarb.org>";
}

simple-key "VL-e"
{
  Fingerprint "7CB8BF1DDD50687A2212EFF017685BD0E38D518D";
  Name "VL-e PoC Release Managers (P4, Scaling & Validation) ";
}
  5. Get the JPackage repository file.
    Write the following lines to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jpackage.list : 
    rpm      [JPackage] http://www.dutchgrid.nl/mirror/jpackage 1.6/generic free
rpm-src  [JPackage] http://www.dutchgrid.nl/mirror/jpackage 1.6/generic free non-free
rpm      [JPackage] http://www.dutchgrid.nl/mirror/jpackage 1.6/redhat-el-3.0 free
rpm-src  [JPackage] http://www.dutchgrid.nl/mirror/jpackage 1.6/redhat-el-3.0 free
  6. Get the VL-e PoC repository file.
    Write these lines to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vle.list : 
    rpm [VL-e] http://poc.vl-e.nl/distribution 2.1/rhel3 vle updates contrib externals
  7. Get a repository file for your base OS flavor.
    If you have CentOS, use /etc/apt/sources.list.d/centos.list : 
    rpm http://www.dutchgrid.nl/mirror/apt/centos 3/i386 os updates contrib addons centosplus
    If you have Scientific Linux, use /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sl.list : 
    rpm http://linuxsoft.cern.ch/scientific 30x/i386/apt-rpm os updates contrib
  8. Do a apt-get update to update the package database from the known repositories.
  9. To install all the software, type 
    apt-get install vle2-ui
  10. If you also wish to install the packages from the VL-e contrib section (e.g. mono) then type 
    apt-get install vle2-contrib

Installation on RHEL4

Installation on RHEL4 is done with the yum package manager. This is the standard package management tool for RHEL4.

Beginning with RHEL4 we support 64 bit systems. This architecture is indicated by the mnemonic x86_64. These systems also support 32 bit binaries, so it's perfectly ok to install the i386 release on a x86_64 machine. The other way around this is not true.

Installation step by step:
  1. Install the VL-e PoC yum repository file /etc/yum.repos.d/vle.repo : 
    [vle2]
name=VL-e PoC R2
baseurl=http://poc.vl-e.nl/distribution/2.1/rhel4/vle/$basearch/
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://poc.vl-e.nl/distribution/2.1/extra/RPM-GPG-KEY-vle

[vle2 updates]
name=VL-e PoC R2 updates
baseurl=http://poc.vl-e.nl/distribution/2.1/rhel4/updates/$basearch/
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://poc.vl-e.nl/distribution/2.1/extra/RPM-GPG-KEY-vle

[vle2 externals]
name=VL-e PoC R2 externals
baseurl=http://poc.vl-e.nl/distribution/2.1/rhel4/externals
gpgcheck=0

[vle2 contrib]
name=VL-e PoC R2 contributed packages
baseurl=http://poc.vl-e.nl/distribution/2.1/rhel4/contrib/$basearch/
gpgcheck=0
  2. Install the JPackage 1.6 yum repository file /etc/yum.repos.d/jpackage.repo : 
    [jpackage16-generic]
name=JPackage 1.6, generic
baseurl=http://www.dutchgrid.nl/mirror/jpackage/1.6/generic/free/
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://poc.vl-e.nl/distribution/2.1/extra/jpackage.asc

[jpackage16-rhel40]
name=JPackage 1.6 for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
baseurl=http://www.dutchgrid.nl/mirror/jpackage/1.6/redhat-el-4.0/free/
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://poc.vl-e.nl/distribution/2.1/extra/jpackage.asc
  3. Install the vle2 metapackage. 
    yum install vle2-ui
    This will install all required packages for a VL-e PoC User Interface.
  4. If you also wish to install the packages from the VL-e contrib section (e.g. mono) then type 
    yum install vle2-contrib

Installing gLite

To install the gLite grid middleware, your best chance of success is to download and run the yaim-install-ui script. This can be done before or after installing the PoC, because they are independent.

The yaim-install-ui script will install a User Interface type node, which is what most people want anyway. If you are really sure you want something else, see the installation documentation for gLite. For RHEL3, that is gLite 3.0; for RHEL4, it can be found at gLite 3.1.

Notes when upgrading from PoC R1

When running into trouble

If any of the above procedures fail, please report this to vle-pfour-team@lists.vl-e.nl or grid.support@nikhef.nl.

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