[xcat-user] xCAT2.1 + stateless + GPFS: an idea

[Vallard Benincosa]

I think stateless GPFS is a little more complicated than that.  Also, from
what I see, unless you have a YUM or zypper repository, genimage won't find
those RPMS for GPFS.  In addition, with GPFS You need to install the base
RPMS, and then the update RPMS for it to work.  Yum nor zypper do that
properly.  So far I've found the best way is to just rpm -Uivh gpfs.*rpm
--root=/install/netboot/..../rootimg/

We also had a GPFS daemon that was written for xCAT 1.3 that was ported over
to xCAT 2.  I'm not sure why that autogpfsd client has not made it into the
xCAT distribution.

Torsten, it would be great if you could write how you did it in the wiki.
I'll try to do the same with the autogpfs daemon that we used last month.

On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 9:11 AM, Ling Gao <linggao at us.ibm.com> wrote:

> Torsten,
> It will work. However, there is an xCAT standard way to achieve the same
> thing.
> For the second party, you can put the GPFS setup code in a separate file
> say 'gpfs_setup', copy it under /install/postscripts directory. And add
> 'gpfs_setup' to the postscript table. You script will be run by
> xcatdsklspost automatically during the node deployment stage.
> For the first part that installs the GPFS in the image, copy GPFS rpms to
> /install/post/otherpkgs/<os>/<arch> directory, (where os and arch for the
> node can be found in the nodetype table), and run genimage again. It should
> install the GPFS into the image. Let me know if it does not work because I
> do not have a SLES machine here yet to test it.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ling Gao
> Poughkeepsie Unix Development Lab
> IBM Systems and Technology Group
> Internal: T/L 293-5692
> External: linggao at us.ibm.com, 845-433-5692
>
> "I never worry about the future. It comes soon enough." --- Albert Einstein
>
> [image: Inactive hide details for Torsten <torsten at bloth.net>]Torsten <
> torsten at bloth.net>
>
>
>
>     *Torsten <torsten at bloth.net>*
>             Sent by: xcat-user-bounces at lists.xcat.org
>
>             10/02/2008 10:02 AM
>             Please respond to
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> Subject
>
> [xcat-user] xCAT2.1 + stateless + GPFS: an idea
>
> Hello folks,
>
> I played a bit with my stateless cluster, based on SLES10.2 and the
> latest xCAT2.1 snap
>
> For GPFS the tricky part is to load the GPFS environment on the nodes
> during the boot.
> On a diskfull installation you have the GPFS state informations on your
> disk. That's not the case within a stateless environment.
>
> So my idea was the following:
> I copied the whole /usr/lpp into my stateless image and booted all the
> nodes.
>
> Now I added all nodes to my GPFS cluster (mmaddnode).
>
> When I now reboot the nodes they don't have their GPFS environment
> anymore. The good news is: they are still known as part of the GPFS
> cluster.
> Now GPFS has a nice command named mmsdrrestore
>
> So I added the following to the end of /install/postscripts/xcatdsklspost
> ---
> #### TBLOTH GPFS Setup
>
> MMSDRRESTORE=/usr/lpp/mmfs/bin/mmsdrrestore
> MMSTARTUP=/usr/lpp/mmfs/bin/mmstartup
> MMSHUTDOWN=/usr/lpp/mmfs/bin/mmshutdown
> SCP=/usr/bin/scp
> GPFS_MASTER=idpx04
>
> echo -n "Starting GPFS Restore (mmsdrrestore)"
> $MMSDRRESTORE -p $GPFS_MASTER -R $SCP
> $MMSTARTUP
> ---
>
> Replace GPFS_MASTER with you primary GPFS node.
> Now just re-pack the image and boot it.
>
> Mission accomplished (well, at least for me :-)
> ---
>
> Does it look like a valid idea?
> The only point you have to be aware of is to have the nodes already
> within you GPFS cluster.
>
> Cheerejo
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