Scyld and Red Hat 7

[Mike Davis]

For a production server, I'm in complete agreement with Martin. The most
important thing that a
research computer can do is continually compute research. Flippant as
that might sound, it is the
truth. While I have upgraded my desktop and some webservers to RH7, I
have no overwhelming
desire to upgrade our cluster for the reasons mentioned.


>
>
>
> Martin Siegert wrote:
>
>   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).
>
>
>
>
--
Mike Davis                      University Computing Services-MCV
Unix Systems Administrator      Virginia Commonwealth University
jmdavis at hsc.vcu.edu             804-828-9843 x142 (fax: 804-828-9807)