"VL-e Proof-of-Concept Distribution", 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 Software Distribution

About the PoC R1 software release

This first official release of the PoC software, or simply PoC R1 release, is based on the list that was handed down by the VleIT. The software has been bundled as an apt-getable and yum-installable repository of RPM packages. This bundle can be installed on any Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 compatible distribution.

The LCG 2.7 middleware is not bundled with this distribution, but can be installed separately with YAIM. The PoC installer script will do this automatically. There is also a YAIM function for installing the PoC on existing YAIM installations.

The full set of the PoC software is obtained by installing one of two meta-RPMs, vl-e-ui for user interfaces or vl-e-wn for worker nodes (this is a subset without the graphical user interface tools).

The latest release of the PoC R1 is Build 27 (Release Notes). The build number can be determined by running

  rpm -q vl-e
which will return vl-e-1.0-27vle, where the build number is highlighted.

Documentation for the packages found in the PoC R1 distribution can be found in the Documentation section.

Installation instructions

The easiest way to install the PoC is to download the PoC installer, and run it as root. This will install a LCG UI and the vl-e-ui package, without asking a lot of questions.

Site adminstrators with their own LCG-YAIM 2.7 installation can use the vle-yaiminstaller RPM and issue the command

/opt/lcg/yaim/scripts/run_function <SITE-INFO-DEF> install_vle_poc

This will install the PoC vl-e-ui and/or vl-e-wn based on the node type of the machine.

There is also a manual procedure outlined below.

Prerequisite software

Base OS

The PoC requires a Red Hat Enterprise Edition 3 compatible installation to run. These include CentOS 3 and Scientific Linux 3. Other distributions are not guaranteed.

In addition to the base OS installation the following packages must be installed to fulfill all the dependencies:

These can all be obtained from the original base OS distribution, either from the internet or from the original installation media. The automatic PoC installer can also fetch these packages for you.

Java 2 SDK

The PoC requires the j2sdk 1.4.2 RPM from SUN. This RPM can not be redistributed due to license restrictions; download it from Sun and install it manually.

Common Java packages

We've settled on JPackage for common java packages such as log4j, lucene, etc. Their software can be installed with apt or yum just like the PoC. The automatic PoC installer will deal with this automatically; instructions on how to add the repository to your package management configuration manual is found below (or see the JPackage website).

Updates

Since the PoC 1.0 release, numerous updates have been made to the PoC distribution software.
Our policy is, that if you install the PoC from this website that you will always receive the latest updates. We label this release simply as 1. It consists of the PoC 1.0 release plus all updates since April 7th, 2006. A copy of the installation notes for the 1.0 release can be found here.

To update your existing installation to the latest release, follow these steps:

  1. Make sure that the updates channel is present in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vle.list:
    # cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vle.list
    rpm      [VL-e]     http://poc.vl-e.nl/distribution 1.0 vle updates
    
    
    If it is not present, then either add it manually or do a 'wget' to get the vle.list file:
    wget -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vle.list http://poc.vl-e.nl/distribution/1/extra/vle.list
    
  2. Type
    apt-get update
    apt-get -y upgrade
    
    to download the latest updates for the PoC R1 release.
The release notes for the latest release can be found here.

Manual installation

You can browse the repository and basically install any or all of the rpms found in the RPMS.vle and RPMS.updates directories. Resolving dependencies is up to you, which is why you really want one of the semi-automated methods below.

All RPMS are signed with GPG. You can import the GPG key into the RPM database by typing rpm --import http://poc.vl-e.nl/distribution/1/RPM-GPG-KEY-vle, but if you don't trust this you should contact one of the release managers personally to obtain the public key.

Instructions for APT based distributions.

Apt is the Debian package management tool; it is the default tool used by the PoC installer because it is also used by YAIM for installing the LCG middleware.

  1. Make sure that you install the prerequisite software first.
  2. Make sure that the defective versions (1.5) of ant and ant-libs as shipped by RedHat Enterprise Linux 3, Scientific Linux 3 and CentOS 3 are removed:
    rpm -e ant ant-libs
    
  3. Import the GPG keys

    Download the VL-e public key from http://poc.vl-e.nl/distribution/1/RPM-GPG-KEY-vle or contact us directly. Download the JPackage Project key from http://www.jpackage.org/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 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. Do a 'wget' to get the jpackage.list file
    wget -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jpackage.list http://poc.vl-e.nl/distribution/1/extra/jpackage.list
    
    or manually add 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. Do a 'wget' to get the vle.list file
    wget -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vle.list http://poc.vl-e.nl/distribution/1/extra/vle.list
    
    or manually add the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vle.list:
    rpm      [VL-e]     http://poc.vl-e.nl/distribution 1.0 vle updates
    
  7. Do apt-get update to read the header information from the repositories.
  8. To install all the software, type apt-get install vl-e-ui.

Instructions for YUM based distributions.

Yum is the default package management system for Red Hat based installations.

  1. Make sure that you install the prerequisites as mentioned above.
  2. Make sure that the defective versions (1.5) of ant and ant-libs as shipped by RedHat Enterprise Linux 3, Scientific Linux 3 and CentOS 3 are removed:
    rpm -e ant ant-libs
    
  3. Add the following lines to your /etc/yum.conf.
    [jpackage16-generic]
    name=JPackage 1.6, generic
    baseurl=http://www.dutchgrid.nl/mirror/jpackage/1.6/generic/free/
    gpgcheck=1
    
    [jpackage16-rhel30]
    name=JPackage 1.6 for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3
    baseurl=http://www.dutchgrid.nl/mirror/jpackage/1.6/redhat-el-3.0/free/
    gpgcheck=1
    
    [vle]
    name=VL-e Release 1.0
    baseurl=http://poc.vl-e.nl/distribution/1
    gpgcheck=1
    
  4. Do a yum install vl-e-ui to install all the software.

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