OSCAR and debian
Hello,
I'm an OSCAR developper (working on support for diskless clusters)
and I started using debian a few month ago.
I would like to know if some people would be interested in porting OSCAR
to debian ?
This not an easy task because all packages are distributed in the
rpm file format. I'm not (yet) familar with the .deb packaging system and I
just did some tests with the alien program to convert some rpm files
(with and without success ;-).
Anyway, here is a list of problems that can be splitted easily between
different people :
1) installation on the master node :
- rpm prerequisite -> deb prereq [easy]
- convert all OSCAR rpm -> deb package [???]
- scripts : minor modification [easy]
( OSCAR is support multi-distro already...)
2) image building :
This is certainly the hardest part.
- system installation suite (sisuite.org) is doing all the hard job
to build a complete system from a rpm list. I think that FAI is
already doing this ?
- image customization : this done automatically (when installing an
image) and it will certainly require some work for the network
interface part that is very different from distro to distro.
3) Image installation :
This part should not require any amount of work
4) Core packages~:
Some adjustements to the setup scripts (that can be hidden in the
rpm files).
Main tool for cluster management : C3 has not been (IIRC) tested on
debian.
http://www.csm.ornl.gov/torc/C3/
It "should" work as it rely only on python and use some generic
tools (SSH, rsync, ...). This is a core component of OSCAR and the
first one we should work on.
5) Packages :
OSCAR has now a very modular structure and we are currently
developping a CPAN like functionality so that anyone can easily add
an OSCAR package. It means that once the framework of OSCAR has been
ported, we can test/modify the packages one after the other.
Packages included openPBS, LAM/MPI, MPICH, PVM, ...
Programming langage : OSCAR scripts are bash, csh and mainly in PERL.
Anyway, if there some people interested by this, I can raise the subject at our
next meeting in mid-january.
Also, I know that debian want to fully support LSB and, as far as I know, LSB
has choosen the rpm file format for binary package distribution. Is it
planned to support the rpm format "natively" soon ? (In which case, it
would be easier to modify OSCAR so that it become fully LSB compliant ?)
hints, advice, flame : all welcome !
Ben
--
Benoit des Ligneris Etudiant au Doctorat -- Ph. D. Student
Web : http://benoit.des.ligneris.net/
OSCAR developper http://www.openclustergroup.org/OSCAR/
Mydynaweb Developpe(u)r: http://mydynaweb.net/
GPG/PGP Key http://benoit.des.ligneris.net/linux/gpg.txt
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