"VL-e Proof-of-Concept Distribution - Release Notes", owner=>"Dennis van Dok", email=>"dennisvd@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 Distribution

Release Notes for the PoC R2.1, build 12

This document contains the release notes for the PoC distribution.

Release 2

The VL-e PoC is a collection of scientific tools and middleware for a broad spectrum of e-sciences, geared towards grid computing and high-performance computing.

Although some tools were developed within the VL-e project, most are repackaged versions of third party software.

Release 2 does not replace Release 1; if you install it on a machine that has Release 1 on it, it will be installed alongside.

Changes for R2.1 build 14 (2007-11-27)

The following packages were updated:

A new vle2 metapackage was introduced:

which is the preferred method for installing the VL-e packages from the contrib area. Currently, the only packages found in this area is mono, the GNU .NET environment.

Changes for R2.1 build 12 (2007-09-13)

The following packages were updated:

Changes for R2.1 build 10 (2007-08-30)

R2.1 Build 10 uses a slightly different package naming scheme to allow for easier integration with Quattor, the fabric management tool used on the Nikhef clusters. The new pacakge naming scheme uses only the major and minor version numbers in the RPM name instead of the full version number. So
  fsl_3.3.7-3.3.7-6vle
is now replaced by
  fsl_3.3-3.3.11-3vle
This change should be transparent to the end-user.

The following packages were updated:

Changes for build 26 (2007-04-11)

Build 26 is the same version as used for the DVD release.

The following packages were updated:

Changes since PoC R1

These are the most important changes to the PoC since release 1.

New Packaging strategy

Each package now installs in its own directory. Summarily, the new scheme is as follows:

This makes it possible to have simultaneous installations of multiple versions of the same package.

To simplify the use of these packages, most of them have been outfitted with a modulefile to set the correct environment. For instance, the PATH variable is usually set to

  /opt/vl-e/package_version/bin. 

To use a particular package, a simple command like

  module load package

in the shell or at the top of a job is sufficient to load the corresponding modulefile.

Java software

Java SDK 1.5.0 is included with the PoC R2. As J2SDK 1.4.2 was already used in R1, it is retained in R2. That means that both versions are installed.

Common Java software (such as ant) is taken from JPackage 1.6 and therefore not separately included in the PoC.

Grid Middleware

The PoC R2 contains Globus Toolkit 4, as did R1. The version has been brought up to date with respect to security advisories.

On RHEL3 platforms, the EGEE/gLite 3.0 grid middleware is installed separately with YAIM; the PoC installer will automatically do this. This is based on Globus Toolkit 2, witch some EGEE specific touches. It is needed to use most of the current grid infrastructure at Nikhef and SARA.

On RHEL4 platforms, the EGEE/gLite 3.1 grid middleware is installed separately with YAIM; the PoC installer will automatically do this. This is based on Globus Toolkit 4, witch some EGEE specific touches.

New Packages

These packages make their debut in PoC R2:

Removed Packages

These packages are no longer part of the PoC, although they remain available as part of PoC R1

Bugs

When you discover a bug, please report it in GForge (preferably) or mail to: vle-pfour-team@lists.vl-e.nl

Known Problems

Apt is used for package management, to fix several shortcomings of yum on RHEL 3. Note that yum on RHEL 4 is an entirely different program and probably does a lot better.

Apt has a couple of known problems; (1) it can update your system, but it won't automatically upgrade the kernel. You should do that manually or through yum update; (2) large http transfers may cause md5sum failures because apt doesn't properly handle chunked encoding. Use ftp instead or coerce the web site into using HTTP/1.0.

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