Note: This version of the VDT (1.6.0) is no longer supported. Feel free to look through the documentation and install it, but we cannot guarantee support for it. The current stable release is 1.10.1.

VDT 1.6.0 Release

On 21-Dec-2006, the VDT team announced the release of VDT 1.6.0. Please note that the following list of changes are changes from VDT 1.4.0 (our last stable release) not from VDT 1.5.2 (our last development release). We did this since most users do not use or closely follow the development releases.

Highlights of changes since 1.4.0

• When you install the VDT as root, even if you ask for services to be running, they will not be running at the end of your installation. You must run vdt-control --on to start them up. This is a new command.
• The Gratia accounting software has been added to the VDT.
• Our ability to handle in-place software updates has been improved.
• When installing a new VDT release, some configuration from an old VDT installation can be automatically copied to the new installation.
• When using EDG-MakeGridmap in OSG, the osg-user-vo-map.txt file is now automatically generated and will produce more accurate information about which VOs are supported.
• Globus was updated to be version 4.0.3 + patches from the "community branch" to be synchronized with TeraGrid.

Details follow.

New Features Since 1.4.0

• We have added the ability to copy some configuration from an old VDT installation on the same computer to your new installation. To use this, define $OLD_VDT_LOCATION before you begin your installation. It should be set to the full pathname of the old location for the VDT.
  Currently, we preserve configuration for GUMS, VOMS, and EDG-MakeGridmap. We chose to focus on these because they are the hardest for most people to preserve by hand: GUMS and VOMS have MySQL databases in addition to configuration files. As time permits, we will expand the configuration that we can preserve. If you have any components that you think we should address first, please let us know.
  • For GUMS, we can preserve configuration from VDT 1.3.9 and later
  • For VOMS, we can preserve configuration from VDT 1.3.7 and later
  • For EDG-Make-Gridmap, any version of the VDT
  Note that we also preserve the questions: your answers to all questions are copied from the old installation, and you are not asked any questions that you previously answered.
• To support for side-by-side VDT installs and updates, the VDT scripts that manage system-wide services (e.g., init.d scripts and cron jobs) changed:
  • Regardless of how installation questions are answered, no services are installed into system locations or started at installation time. Instead, answers are saved for when the VDT is actually started up (see next item). This new behavior is required for side-by-side installs: Newly installed services might conflict with existing services, and yet the existing services must continue to run until the new installation is completely ready. It is also convenient to be able to start up and shut down all of the VDT at the same time.
  • There is a new script to enable and disable VDT services: vdt-control. Enabling a service means installing it into system locations (e.g., copying the init script from within the VDT to /etc/init.d) and starting the service (init.d services only). Disabling a service means stopping it (init.d services only) and removing it from system locations. Disabling a service does not mean removing it from the VDT — it can be re-enabled from the same installation. To use this command:
  • The general process to install the VDT is now this:
    1. Set $OLD_VDT_LOCATION if you want to preserve configuration from an old VDT installation.
    2. Install the VDT
    3. Source a setup script (setup.sh or setup.csh)
    4. Read the post-install/README and do post-install steps listed there
    5. If needed, run configure scripts to complete post-install configuration
    6. Run vdt-control --onto enable VDT services
    7. When needed, run vdt-control --off to disable VDT services

    vdt-control --on            # Enable all services in the VDT that don't conflict with existing services
    vdt-control --on --force    # Enable all services in the VDT
    vdt-control --on <service>  # Enable just this service
    
    vdt-control --off           # Disable all services in the VDT
    vdt-control --off <service> # Disable just this service
    
    vdt-control --list          # List each service in the VDT, and its desired state (not current state)
    

• Many questions asked by the VDT used to have three possible answers: y (yes), n (no), and s (skip). 'No' would uninstall any existing service that looked like the one that was being installed, so 's' was the answer most people normally wnated. This was confusing, so now there are only two answers, yes and no. After installation, no services are running, and you must start them up with vdt_control --on. When vdt-control tries to start up each service, it will refuse to start up a service if it appears that it's already running from a different installation (VDT or system-wide). You can force it to start it up by using the --force option.
• We have a new version of Globus with updated features from the Globus community branch. This is code shared with TeraGrid. It includes the new GRAM auditing features. They are turned off by default, and we don't yet have advice on how to use them.

New Software Since 1.4.0

• Gratia If you wish to use Gratia and you are part of OSG, you'll get it as part of your installation. If you want to install it by hand, first install something like VDT or VDT-Gatekeeper packages, then install the Gratia-Reporting package. You will also need a probe for your batch system, so install one of the following probes:
  • Gratia-Condor-Probe
  • Gratia-LSF-Probe
  • Gratia-PBS-Probe
  (VDT Ticket 1657) (VDT Ticket 1658) (VDT Ticket 1659)
• MySQL 5.0.27 was added to better support Gratia. Other software that uses MySQL still uses version 4.1.21.
• OSG-VO-Map was added. The upshot of this package is that it will automatically generate the osg-user-vo-map.txt file instead of requiring it to be maintained by hand. As a result, it should be more accurate and should not publish VOs that are not supported.
  Details: This package provides two scripts: one named generate-vo-map, and one named check-vo-map. Both of these are optionally used by EDG-Make-Gridmap to create a good osg-user-vo-map.txt file. Check-vo-map is used by GUMS to verify that the osg-user-vo-map.txt file it creates is good. Further documentation is available in the package once you download it, but most of it should happen automatically. (VDT Ticket 1541)
• Curl 7.16.0 was added.

Upgraded Software Since 1.4.0

• Apache HTTPD 2.2.3
• EDG Make Gridmap 2.7.0
• Fetch CRL 2.6.2
• Globus Toolkit, pre web-services 4.0.3
• Globus Toolkit, web-services 4.0.3
• GSI-Enabled OpenSSH 3.8
• Java SDK 1.4.2_12
• jClarens 0.6.2-1
• jClarens Web Service Registry 0.6.2-1
• MonALISA 1.6.8
• MyProxy 3.6
• MySQL 4.1.21
• NMI Build and Test 2.2.0
• PPDG Cert Scripts 2.1
• PRIMA Authorization Module 0.5
• Squid Web Proxy Cache 2.5.14-1
• SRM V1 Client 1.25
• UberFTP 1.22
• Virtual Data System 1.4.7
• VOMS 1.6.16.10
• Wget 1.10.2

Removed Software Since 1.4.0

We have removed the following packages from the VDT, because they appear to be unused by VDT users:

• ClassAds
• Netlogger
• Fault Tolerant Shell
• JobMon

Bug Fixes Since 1.4.0

• Fixed how Globus-Core installs. It now installs the correct flavors on 64-bit platforms and avoids a bug that creates the flavors incorrectly. (VDT Ticket 1370)
• The Sun Grid Engine jobmanager for Globus has been updated with patches from Jerome Lauret.

New Platform Support

• Scientific Linux 4 (x86, x86-64, and ia64) is now supported. (VDT Ticket 2008)
• We now build software on more platforms, so our existing platform support for modern Linux distributions should be better. (To be specific, most software is built on RedHat Enterprise Linux 3 and 4 (x86, x86-64, and IA64) and Fedora Core 4 (x86 & x86-64)).

Platforms No Longer Supported

After consulting with the VDT community about the need for supporting old platforms, we have dropped support for the following:

• RedHat 7
• RedHat 9

In a separate issue, we were unable to get working 32-bit installations on IA-64 machines. On RedHat Enterprise Linux 3 (AS), running the 32-bit globus-rls-server binary consistently locked up the test machine, necessitating a hard reboot; if the RLS init script was installed in /etc/rc.d/init.d, rebooting caused the machine to lock up. On an IA-64 Scientific Linux 4 machine, all 32-bit binaries would refuse to run, preventing the installation from completing. Despite trying hard to fix these problems, they remain. So, after much consideration, we have dropped support for:

• 32-bit installations on IA-64 systems

Other Changes since 1.4.0

• We now use Pacman 3.19. This has a nice new feature: you can source user-defined setup files before or after the rest of the contents of setup.sh (or setup.csh). Look in setup.sh for details, but the idea is that you can make directories called pre-setup and post-setup, and these contain setup files that are sourced before and after the rest of setup.sh, respectively.
• Squid has now been compiled with SNMP support. The configure_squid script takes an optional argument, --allow-snmp to specify a host that can query your Squid installation via SNMP to collect data.
• The configure_squid script now takes two parameters, --mem-cache-size and --disk-cache-size to override the defaults. The VDT default is to use 1/4th of your system's memory and 1/2 of the disk space that was available when Squid was installed. (This is on the same disk that Squid was installed on.)
• the gums-host-cron script will now include $VDT_LOCATION/monitoring/grid3-user-vo-map.local into $VDT_LOCATION/monitoring/grid3-user-vo-map.txt. The text is simply copied, with no editing or verification. If the .local file doesn't exist, nothing happens. This allows you to make easy modifications ot the grid3-user-vo-map file.
• EDG-Make-Gridmap is now invoked in a way that preserves information from a VOMS server if it exists but cannot be contacted.
• The generic information provider configuration has been updated.

To learn more, you can view the main documentation page or documentation specific to VDT 1.6.0.

The VDT 1.6.0 cache is located at: http://vdt.cs.wisc.edu/vdt_160_cache