Notes on the 21st Linux User Meeting held on 2002 Nov 13 ======================================================== Topics: ------- 1. New rack mounted Dual Xeon Compute Servers 2. DESY Linux Status: Bits and Pieces 3. Farm Services at CERN and DESY-Zeuthen 4. Current issues within the PC standarts commitee 5. Use of Zaurus Handhelds within Zeus 6. AOB 7. Discussion on Laptop support 8. Discussion on DESY Linux 5 9. Next meeting 1. New rack mounted Dual Xeon Compute Servers --------------------------------------------- Uwe Ensslin introduced a new rack mounted server system that packs 2 Xeon CPUs with up to 2.8 GHz into 1 units of heigth (44mm) or 2 units of heigth. The systems are Supermicro Superservers 6012P-i and 6022P-i, respectively. Slides with more detailed specifications are available at http://www-it.desy.de/systems/linux in the 'DESY Linux User Meetings' section. A 2U system was displayed at the meeting. The 1U system could be the new farm node and indeed H1 is in the process of acquiring several systems for this purpose. The 2U system could become the new work group server system and thus a replacement for the current DELFI-1. A discussion on prices and heat management issues followed the presentation. 2. DESY Linux Status: Bits and Pieces ------------------------------------- DESY Linux 4 currently runs stable in production with only the ususal day to day buiseness which is unspectacular but costs a lot of manpower to operate. Two issues were mentioned in particular: Some KDE stability problems that were mentioned in the last meeting now have been fixed. The ext3 file system type is now the default for new installations. 3. Farm Services at CERN and DESY-Zeuthen ----------------------------------------- Stephan Wiesand from DESY-Zeuthen gave a presentation on the experiences of sharing farm resources at Zeuthen and CERN incorporating recent information from the last HEPIX meeting. The slides are available at http://www-it.desy.de/systems/linux in the 'DESY Linux User Meetings' section. These experiences imply that shared farm resources may be considered at DESY-Hamburg as a future model for operating and accessing large systems. The benefits are that the utilization of shared resources usually is much better than for farms dedicated for single collaborations and that each participant can occasionally use more than their share of the resources. Managing huge shared farms can be a challenge, though. Sharing of resources also is mandatory in frameworks like GRID and GAN and in general the HEP community is going this way. This is also emphasized in a report by Alan Silverman given at the latest HEPIX. To get ready for developments, DESY needs to gain some experience in operating shared resources. 4. Current issues within the PC standards commitee -------------------------------------------------- Knut Woller reported on current issues that are discussed within the PC standards commitee. The topics covered are the same as in the last meeting of the standards commitee. 5. Use of Zaurus Handhelds within Zeus -------------------------------------- Juergen Arndt from Zeus reported on the use of handhelds within Zeus. The device is used as a console for diagnosing PC problems during shifts. Laptops are considered too bulky for this purpose. The slides are available at http://www-it.desy.de/systems/linux in the 'DESY Linux User Meetings' section. 6. AOB ------ Some problems were discussed: After running for 2 weeks, sometimes DELFIs seem to block interactive logins. This is currently under investigation. AFS-Blacklisting of DL4 systems seems to be increasing. This is a 'feature' in IBMs AFS implementation. A cure for the affected system is to switch it off for at least 1.5 hours. Server-based measures are even more time consuming and affect other clients as well, not only the blacklisted client. Therefore they are not an option. A solution will be the switch to OpenAFS servers. 7. Discussion on Notebook support --------------------------------- Notebooks more and more become the tool of choice for an increasing number of people at DESY. As a result, supporting Linux on notebooks gets increasingly important. In an open discussion the participants of the meeting were asked what they expect from Notebook support and on what time scale. Summarizing, the demands were as follows: . The ability to use AFS is needed, together with a tool to cleanly turn AFS on/off when working online/offline. When working from home, access to DESY via VPN is desired. . Full AFS integration is needed, including authentification. . H1 and Hera-B emphasized the general consensus that they need a fast solution, not necessarily a perfect one. 'Time to market' is critical here. . Currently, there is no demand for multiboot ability. The Linux support team will discuss issues in notebook support in the next week and report their findings. 8. Discussion on DESY Linux 5 ----------------------------- Also in an open discussion, the next version of DESY Linux was discussed. The discussion can be summarized as follows: According to the experiments, there is currently no need for them to have a newer system out soon. The change from gcc 2 to gcc 3 that comes with the upgrade to newer Linux systems is a major effort for the experiments. It requires them at least to relink and test their software. Therefore several of them called for support for DL4 for 1-1.5 years. Zeuthen is the only one who favours a quick upgrade. In order to aid migration from gcc 2 to gcc 3, the newer version has already been made available via AFS with the 'ini' mechanism for developers (e.g. GEANT 4) and early adopters. While for production systems a stable environment for at least the next year is needed by the experiments, several have asked to make the most recent KDE version available as soon as possible for desktop-type systems. This will be investigated. 9. Next meeting --------------- The next meeting is scheduled for January 2003. 2002-11-15, 2002-11-21, Uwe Ensslin