Scyld and Red Hat 7

[Martin Siegert]

On Wed, Jan 31, 2001 at 07:21:15AM -0800, Jag wrote:
> I noticed that a few days ago Scyld released their first commercial
> version of their beowulf software.  However, after looking at the files
> on their ftp site, I noticed that it is still based on Red Hat 6.2.
> However Red Hat 7.0 has been out for over four months (and thier public
> beta showing what would be in it for even longer).  Are there any plans
> to make the Scyld beowulf software become based on something in the Red
> Hat 7 series as opposed to the Red Hat 6 series?  And if so, when can we
> expect to see this?

Honestly: why? What is there in RH 7 that I need and that I don't have
in RH 6.2? RH 6.2 is still fully supported hence there is no reason
to upgrade, if there isn't anything in RH 7 that really would be an
improvement for a Beowulf.

There are very good reasons not to upgrade:
1. You almost certainly have to purchase again all commercial software
   that you have installed on the cluster (e.g., Fortran compilers,
   math libraries, etc.) because the versions that work with RH6.x will
   not work with glibc-2.2.
2. You have to fight with things like xinetd (it took me a full day to
   get rsh without passwords working and still having access control
   working with ALL : ALL in /etc/hosts.deny).

The one reason that could make me upgrade is the installation of a 2.4
kernel. Since RH 7.0 does not have it, there is no reason to upgrade yet.
If it turns out that the 2.4 kernel is easier to install on a 7.0 system
then I may go ahead. I definitely would prefer to install the new kernel
under 6.2 (until now I failed to get a running system: my test box hangs
after printing the message "booting the kernel ..." to the screen. Any
ideas? I attribute this to some mistake I have made, not to RH 6.2).

Cheers,
Martin

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Martin Siegert
Academic Computing Services                        phone: (604) 291-4691
Simon Fraser University                            fax:   (604) 291-4242
Burnaby, British Columbia                          email: siegert at sfu.ca
Canada  V5A 1S6
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