HCL cluster

http://hcl.ucd.ie/Hardware

HCL Cluster 2.0

In preperation for a fresh installation of operating systems on HCL Cluster the follow list of packages are requested. After upgrade is complete, this list will become a reference for installed software:

• fftw
• git
• gnuplot
• netperf
• octave
• qhull
• subversion
• valgrind

Compilation on HCL

• Add to your environment

export ARCH=`uname -r`
if [ `hostname` == 'hcl13.ucd.ie' ]; then
    export ARCH=`uname -r`smp
fi

• On hcl09 and hcl10, create a directory $HOME/$ARCH. Actually, 2.4.27-2-386 and 2.6.11-1.1369_FC4smp directories will be created.

• Configure all the software on hcl09 and hcl10, with --prefix=$ARCH

Installing Precompiled Software on HCL Fedora Core 4 nodes

If you need a piece of software that is not already installed you may not need to compile it from source. It is possible to install pre-compiled packages to folders in your home directory<ref>http://www.ajay.ws/2009/7/10/install-a-rpm-in-home-directory-as-non-root</ref>, and this is often easier than compiling from source. The cluster uses two different OSes at present, Fedora Core 4 and Debian. These both have different pre-compiled package formats, RPM for Fedora and .deb for Debian. Unfortunately relocating the default install directory of a .deb package is troublesome, so this article only pertains to Fedora.

Fedora Core 4 is was EOL'd in 2006<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/LifeCycle/EOL</ref>and 4 years later there are few remaining resources supporting it. You can still find Fedora 4 RPMs at the following links (long unsearchable lists, give them time to load):

http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/fedora-archive/fedora/linux/core/4/i386/os/Fedora/i386

http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/fedora-archive/fedora/linux/extras/4/i386

http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/fedora-archive/fedora/linux/core/updates/4/i386

What follows is an example of installing the 'gv' (ghostview) package into a folder defined by an environment variable: $APPSDIR (which has a similar to purpose to $ARCH in the previous section).

1. find an RPM file for your desired package
   
2. create rpm database directory in local tree (only do this once):
   mkdir -p $APPSDIR/var/lib/rpm
3. initialise rpm database (do this only once also):
   rpm --initdb --root $APPSDIR
4. check what files are installed by the RPM file of your package
   rpm -qlp gv-3.6.1-4.fc4.i386.rpm
5. test for dependencies (install will not be successful and command will report an error accessing the root rpm database, ignore this):
   rpm -ivh gv-3.6.1-4.fc4.i386.rpm
   if a dependency is found, the RPM for it must also be found and appended to the rpm -i command (until no further dependencies are required).
6. do actual install to our local folder:
   rpm --root $APPSDIR --relocate /usr=$APPSDIR --nodeps -ivh gv-3.6.1-4.fc4.i386.rpm