[Beowulf] centos5 as cluster os

[Tod Hagan]

On Fri, 2008-02-15 at 16:35 +0100, Alan Louis Scheinine wrote:
> I use Centos.  For years and years I have compiled
> from source Gnu Scientific Library and many, many
> other software packages.  I write notes while doing
> the compiling from scratch so the next compilation
> of the same package is rapid.

Turn your notes into code -- I write scripts to build the packages which
as a side effect document things such as the arguments to configure.
It's overkill for simple './configure ; make ; make install' packages,
but has served well for complex packages.

Scripting the build process paid off handsomely for me recently when I
needed to build multiple versions of libraries using different versions
of compilers in an attempt to track down a problems affected by compiler
version.

> Personally I cannot imagine using software applications
> as found in any distribution.  For any user request, I
> compile from scratch from the software WWW site. Doesn't
> everybody do this?

Certainly with RHEL/Centos there isn't much choice, as even the epel
repo doesn't add enough packages to get anywhere near what Ubuntu
offers, for instance. And while I do want or need to build my own
versions of MPICH and certain other libraries and packages needed by the
users on the cluster, I have no interest in building programs for image
viewers such as qiv and ggv just because they're not included in the
distro, or worse, dropped in a new version (as was ggv from RHEL).

Tod

-- 
Tod Hagan
Information Technologist
AIRMAP/Climate Change Research Center
Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space
University of New Hampshire
Durham, NH 03824
Phone: 603-862-3116