Originally posted by: bill, Fri Feb 02, 2007 7:51 pm

This question often comes up......

"I have a new application and I want to install it on the OCS cluster how do I do it?"

There are a couple of things you can do:

1) First of all we have 'rolls' for some tools and applications that are already pre-packaged and configured to work with Platform OCS. These particular tools have also been tested by Platform. For example:

Intel Software Tools Roll
ntop roll
Platform LSF HPC Roll

For a complete list have a look at http://my.platform.com and browse to the version of Platform OCS you are using....

So usually I recommend checking that first.

2) There is no 'roll' for the application

If there is no pre-packaged Roll for an application then the next best approach is get the application packaged as an 'rpm'. With an rpm the standard Red Hat 'rpm -i' command will install the package onto a node, or if you are upgrading the 'rpm -u' command.

In order to get the rpm package installed onto all of your compute nodes you'll need to either use 'rocks-compute' or create an 'extend-compute.xml' file and modify it so that once you rebuild the Platform OCS distribution with 'rocks-dist dist' the new distro will contain the rpm packages (and any other associated scripts you want to add) to the compute nodes.

for example:

Since Platform OCS contains RHEL there are several rpm packages that are not installed onto compute nodes but are available in RHEL. Just locate the rpm then add it.

# find /home/install/ftp.rocksclusters.org/pub/rocks/rocks-4.1.1/rocks-dist/rolls/os/4.1.1/x86_64/RedHat/RPMS/ -name 'ncompress*'

# rocks-compute -a -p /home/install/ftp.rocksclusters.org/pub/rocks/rocks-4.1.1/rocks-dist/rolls/os/4.1.1/x86_64/RedHat/RPMS/RPMS/ncompress
-4.2.4-40.i386.rpm -b

That will add the rpm package to the distro and rebuild Platform OCS with 'rocks-dist dist'

If you have a look at the man page for the 'rocks-compute' command it explains what the command does. You can do all of the steps performed by the 'rocks-compute' command manually but it is a bit error prone and you have to be comfortable creating and modifying an 'extend-compute.xml' file.

In addition to rpm packages 'rocks-compute' can add scripts to the compute nodes as well

Bill.