This page describes how software is to be installed on the beowulf. It should be read by anyone wanting to install or upgrade software on the system. Read the root directory page before reading this page.

All software management on the medusa beowulf master and slaves should be performed with the Red Hat Package Manager (RPM). If you are unfamiliar with RPM, become familiar with it. A good place to start is the RPM home page.

The excecption to this is the software under /usr/local. This software resides on the groups file server uwmlsc and is managed by the stow program. All software under /usr/local should be correctly stowed. Nothing should exist directly under this directory. If you are unfamiliar with stow, become familiar with it. The stow home page is a good place to start.

There are 5 classes of software that can be installed on the medusa beowulf. This page describes what they are and where they should be located.

The SRPMS should be kept in the medusa CVS archive

Operating System Software

Operating system software is installed under the root dirctory, i.e. in /bin /sbin /lib /usr/bin /usr/sbin /usr/lib etc.

This software should only be touched in exceptional circumstances, such as a change in the way the system is configured. Regular software such as LAL should not be installed as operating system software.

Every single piece of operating system software should be managed by RPM. There should be no execeptions. This will make it much easier to administer 300 machines without having to re-clone if a change is made to the OS setup.

UWM LSC Group Software

This is under /usr/local. The software resides on uwmlsc and is available to all the medusa bewoulf nodes and the group linux boxes.

This is software that is used by the group for computing work. It is the most general class of software and includes things such as LAL, acrobat, the frame library, xv, etc.

Software should be built as the intel user on any machine and installed in /usr/local so it will be available to all machines.

Sotware should be correctly stowed using the stow package.

Optional Software

Optional software resides under /opt

This class is for software that some users may with to use, but may interfer with other users. Examples are the MPICH implementation of MPI.

Each piece of software should be installed as and RPM in its own subdirectory of /opt and useres my then add individual pieces of software that they wish to use to their paths.

For example the medusa MPICH RPM installs MPICH in /opt/mpich-1.2.1. Users may then add /opt/mpich-1.2.1/bin to their PATH and /opt/mpich-1.2.1/include and /opt/mpich-1.2.1/lib to their include and library paths.

Note that software should not be directly installed under /opt, only in the appropriate sub-directory.

Since /opt exists on every slave, all software should be managed by RPMS.

LIGO Data Computing Group (LDCG) Software

The LDAS software needs specific versions of certain pieces of software that reside under /ldcg. These have been built as an RPM and installed on each node. The LDCG software is also useful for day to day computing, so users may with to add it to their paths.

Software under /ldcg should be managed with the RPM, not stow as described in the LDAS web pages. If updrades need to be performed, the ldcg SRPM should be manipulated and recompiled.

The LDAS install instructions describe how this RPM should be built.

LIGO Data Analysis System (LDAS) Software

The LDAS software is mounted remotely from uwmlsc. It resides under the /ldas directory.

$Id: software.html,v 1.3 2003/01/07 20:27:58 kflasch Exp $

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Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.