Revision as of 18:57, 29 April 2010

• Basic installation of Debian Squeeze

Networking

Interfaces

• edit /etc/networks/interfaces Note that at some point eth1 should be configured by DHCP, it is on the UCD LAN and must be registered correctly (update MAC address with services). eth0 is the internal network.

# The loopback network interface
auto lo eth0 eth1

iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet static
        address 192.168.21.254
        netmask 255.255.255.0
        gateway 192.168.21.1

iface eth1 inet static
        address 193.1.132.124
        netmask 255.255.252.0
        gateway 193.1.132.1

• Install non-free linux firmware for network interface (eth0). This will allow Gigabit operation on eth0 with the tg3 hardware (I think). Edit /etc/apt/sources.list including the lines:

deb http://ftp.ie.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.ie.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free

• Install firmware-linux:

apt-get update && apt-get install firmware-linux

DNS / BIND

We will run our own DNS server for the cluster. First set resolv.conf:

nameserver 127.0.0.1
nameserver 137.43.116.19
nameserver 137.43.116.17
nameserver 137.43.105.22
domain ucd.ie
search ucd.ie

Now install bind9 (apt-get install bind9). Edit /etc/bind/named.conf.local and set the domain zones for the cluster (forwards and reverse). We have two subdomains where reverse lookups will have to be specified 192.168.20 and 192.168.21

//
// Do any local configuration here
//

// Consider adding the 1918 zones here, if they are not used in your
// organization
//include "/etc/bind/zones.rfc1918";

include "/etc/bind/rndc.key";

controls {
	inet 127.0.0.1 allow { localhost; } keys { "rndc-key"; };
};

zone "heterogeneous.ucd.ie" {
	type master;
	file "db.heterogeneous.ucd.ie";
};

zone "21.168.192.in-addr.arpa" {
	type master;
	file "db.192.168.21";
};

zone "20.168.192.in-addr.arpa" {
        type master;
        file "db.192.168.20";
};

Also edit the options file: /etc/bind/named.conf.options, note the subnet we define in the allow sections, 192.168.20/23, it will permit access from 192.168.20.* and 192.168.21.* addresses.

options {
        directory "/var/cache/bind";

        // If there is a firewall between you and nameservers you want
        // to talk to, you may need to fix the firewall to allow multiple
        // ports to talk.  See http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/800113

        // If your ISP provided one or more IP addresses for stable
        // nameservers, you probably want to use them as forwarders.
        // Uncomment the following block, and insert the addresses replacing
        // the all-0's placeholder.

        forwarders {
                137.43.116.19;
                137.43.116.17;
                137.43.105.22;
        };

        recursion yes;

        version "REFUSED";

        allow-recursion {
                127.0.0.1;
                192.168.20.0/23;
        };

        allow-query {
                127.0.0.1;
                192.168.20.0/23;
        };

        auth-nxdomain no;    # conform to RFC1035
        listen-on-v6 { any; };
};

Now work on the zone files specified db.heterogneneous.ucd.ie and the reverse maps db.192.168.21 & db.192.168.21 Populate them with all nodes of the cluster.

IP Tables

• Set up iptables. We want to implement NAT between the internal network (eth0) and external one (eth1). Add a script to /etc/network/if-up.d directory, named 00iptables. All scripts in this directory will be executed after network interfaces are brought up, so this will persist:

#!/bin/sh

PATH=/usr/sbin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin

IF_INT=eth0
IF_EXT=eth1

#
# delete all existing rules.
#
iptables -F
iptables -t nat -F
iptables -t mangle -F
iptables -X

# Always accept loopback traffic
iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT


# Allow established connections, and those not coming from the outside
iptables -A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW ! -i $IF_EXT -j ACCEPT
iptables -A FORWARD -i $IF_EXT -o $IF_INT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT

# Allow outgoing connections from the LAN side.
iptables -A FORWARD -i $IF_INT -o $IF_EXT -j ACCEPT

# Masquerade.
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o $IF_EXT -j MASQUERADE

# Don't forward from the outside to the inside.
iptables -A FORWARD -i $IF_EXT -o $IF_EXT -j REJECT

# Enable routing.
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

Clonezilla

Firstly, Clonezilla is probably going to pollute a lot of your server configuration when it sets itself up. Be prepared to loose your IPtables configuration, NFS (if any) and DHCP settings. Maybe more.

• follow the guide to installing Clonezilla here. Essentially:
  • add repository key

    wget -q http://drbl.sourceforge.net/GPG-KEY-DRBL -O- | apt-key add -
    

  • the line add to /etc/apt/sources.list:

    deb http://drbl.sourceforge.net/drbl-core drbl stable
    

  • run:

    apt-get update && apt-get install drbl && /opt/drbl/sbin/drbl4imp
    

  • accept default options to drbl4imp.

• After Clonezilla has installed edit /etc/dhcpd3/dhcpd.conf, adding all entries for test nodes hcl07 and hcl03. Also ensure these nodes have been removed from the inplace heterogeneous.ucd.ie server so that they are only served by one machine.

default-lease-time			300;
max-lease-time				300;
option subnet-mask			255.255.255.0;
option domain-name-servers  		137.43.116.19,137.43.116.17,137.43.105.22;
option domain-name			"ucd.ie";	
ddns-update-style                       none; # brett had ad-hoc ...?
server-name 				drbl;
filename = "pxelinux.0";


subnet 192.168.21.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
    option subnet-mask	255.255.255.0;
    option routers 192.168.21.1;
    next-server 192.168.21.254;

    pool {
      # allow members of "DRBL-Client";
      range 192.168.21.200 192.168.21.212;
    }

        host hcl03 {
                option host-name "hcl03.ucd.ie";
                hardware ethernet 00:14:22:0A:22:6C;
                fixed-address 192.168.21.5;
        }
	host hcl03_eth1 {
                option host-name "hcl03_eth1.ucd.ie";
                hardware ethernet 00:14:22:0A:22:6D;
                fixed-address 192.168.21.105;
        }
        host hcl07 {
                option host-name "hcl07.ucd.ie";
                hardware ethernet 00:14:22:0A:20:E2;
                fixed-address 192.168.21.9;
        }
        host hcl07_eth1 {
                option host-name "hcl07_eth1.ucd.ie";
                hardware ethernet 00:14:22:0A:20:E3;
                fixed-address 192.168.21.109;
        }

	default-lease-time 21600;	
	max-lease-time 43200;
}

Install DHCP

Install the DHCP server package with apt-get install dhcp3-server. When you install Clonezilla it will probably pollute your DHCP server setup, so make

Install NIS

Copy users from passwd, groups and shadow from /etc on hcl01.

Install nis.

Edit /etc/defaultdomain so that it contains:

heterogeneous.ucd.ie

Edit /etc/defaults/nis so that it contains:

# Are we a NIS server and if so what kind (values: false, slave, master)
NISSERVER=master

Edit /etc/ypserv.securenets so that is contains:

# allow connects from local
255.0.0.0	127.0.0.0
# allow connections from heterogeneous subnets .20 and .21
255.255.254.0 192.168.20.0

The NIS host is also a client of itself, so do the client set up as follows:

Edit /etc/hosts end ensure the NIS Master is listed

192.168.21.254		heterogeneous.ucd.ie	heterogeneous

Edit /etc/yp.conf and ensure that it contains:

domain heterogeneous.ucd.ie server localhost

Edit /etc/passwd adding a line to the end that reads: +::::::. Edit /etc/group with a line +::: at the line.

The NIS Makefile will not pull userid and groupids that are lower than a certain value, we must set this to 500 in /var/yp/Makefile

MINUID=500
MINGID=500

Start the ypbind and yppasswd services. Then initialise the NIS database:

/usr/lib/yp/ypinit -m

Accept defaults at prompts.

Now start other NIS services

service nis start

Installing Ganglia Frontend

Install the packages gmetad and ganglia-webfrontend.

Configure the front end by appending to /etc/apache2/apache2.conf, the following:

Include /etc/ganglia-webfrontend/apache.conf

Configure gmetad by adding to the /etc/ganglia/gmetad.conf, the following line:

data_source "HCL Cluster" 192.168.20.1 192.168.20.16

This means that the gmetad collector connect to hcl01 and hcl16 on the .20 subnet to gather data for the frontend to use.

After all packages are configured execute:

service apache2 restart
service gmetad restart

Pointing your browser to here should display the monitoring page for HCL Cluster. gmond must also be installed and configured on the cluster nodes.

Hardware Monitoring & Backup

Disk Monitoring

Install smartmontools as per here. Briefly:

apt-get install smartmontools

Edit /etc/defaults/smartmontools so that it contails:

# List of devices you want to explicitly enable S.M.A.R.T. for
# Not needed (and not recommended) if the device is monitored by smartd
enable_smart="/dev/sda"

# uncomment to start smartd on system startup
start_smartd=yes

# uncomment to pass additional options to smartd on startup
smartd_opts="--interval=1800"

Edit /etc/smartd.conf and edit the first line that begins with DEVICESCAN (all other lines are ignored). Have it read something like:

DEVICESCAN -d removable -n standby -m root -m robert_higgins@iol.ie -M exec /usr/share/smartmontools/smartd-runner

Then start the service /etc/init.d/smartmontools start Note, consider installing this on all nodes, as it would be interesting to have prior notice of any failing disks.

Torque - PBS

Allow all users to see all queued jobs: qmgr -c 'set server query_other_jobs=TRUE' qmgr -c 'set server query_other_jobs=TRUE' /etc/init.d/smartmontools start