Rocks Cluster Distribution: Users Guide: 
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| Prev | Chapter 1. Installing a Rocks Cluster | Next |
This section describes how to install your Rocks cluster frontend.
 | The minimum requirement to bring up a frontend is to have the following rolls: Kernel Roll CD, Base Roll CD, HPC Roll CD and the OS Roll CD(s). The Base+HPC+Kernel Meta Roll CD can be substituted for the individual Base, Kernel and HPC Rolls. |
Insert the Kernel Roll CD or the Base+HPC+Kernel Roll CD into your frontend machine and reset the frontend machine.
 | For the remainder of this section, we'll use the example of installing a bare-bones frontend, that is, we'll be using using the Base+HPC+Kernel Roll, OS - Disk 1 Roll and the OS - Disk 2 Roll. |
After the frontend boots off the CD, you will see:
When you see the screen above, type:
frontend |
| The "boot:" prompt arrives and departs the screen quickly. It is easy to miss. If you do miss it, the node will assume it is a compute appliance, and the frontend installation will fail and you will have to restart the installation (by rebooting the node). |
 | If the installation fails, very often you will see a screen that complains of a missing /tmp/ks.cfg kickstart file. To get more information about the failure, access the kickstart and system log by pressing Alt-F3 and Alt-F4 respectively. |
After you type frontend, the installer will start running. Soon, you'll see a screen that looks like:
This screen indicates that the required rolls from the Base+HPC+Kernel Roll (Base, HPC and Kernel) have been discovered and added.
You still need to add the OS Rolls to your frontend. To do this, select 'Yes' by pressing the space bar.
After the CD/DVD drive ejects the Base+HPC+Kernel Roll media, you'll see the screen:
Put the OS - Disk 1 Roll CD into the drive and select 'Ok' by pressing the space bar.
When the OS - Disk 1 Roll is discovered, you'll see window with the message:
Found Roll 'os 4.0.0 i386' |
After the OS - Disk 1 Roll is added, you'll see a screen that looks like:
This screen indicates that the required rolls from the Base+HPC+Kernel Roll (Base, HPC and Kernel) and the OS - Disk 1 Roll have been discovered and added.
You still need to add the OS - Disk 2 Roll to your frontend. To do this, select 'Yes' by pressing the space bar.
| If this is an Itanium frontend installation, you will only need to add the OS - Disk 1 Roll. |
Again, you'll see the screen:
Put the OS - Disk 2 Roll CD into the drive and select 'Ok' by pressing the space bar.
When the OS - Disk 2 Roll is discovered, you'll see window with the message:
Found Roll 'os 4.0.0 i386' |
After the OS - Disk 2 Roll is added, you'll see a screen that looks like:
This screen indicates that the required rolls from the Base+HPC+Kernel Roll (Base, HPC and Kernel), the OS - Disk 1 Roll and the OS - Disk 2 Roll have been discovered and added.
At this point, all the required Rolls have been added.
To add an additional Roll, select 'Yes' and input the Roll when prompted (like you did above).
If you have no more Rolls to add, highlight the 'No' button by hitting the Tab key, then select it by hitting the space bar.
Then you'll see the Cluster Information screen:
| The one important field in this screen is the Fully Qualified Hostname (all other fields are optional). Choose your hostname carefully. The hostname is written to dozens of files on both the frontend and compute nodes, if the hostname is changed after the frontend is installed, several cluster services will no longer be able to find the frontend machine. Some of these services include: SGE, Globus, NFS, AutoFS, and Apache. If you plan on adding the Grid Roll (or other Globus PKI services) the hostname must be the primary FQDN for your host. |
Fill out the form, then hit the 'Ok' button.
The disk partitioning screen allows you to select automatic or manual partitioning.
To select automatic partitioning, hit the Autopartition button. This will repartition and reformat the first discovered hard drive that is connected to the frontend. All other drives connected to the frontend will be left untouched.
The first discovered drive will be partitioned like:
Table 1-1. Frontend -- Default Root Disk Partition
| Partition Name | Size |
|---|---|
| / | 6 GB |
| swap | 1 GB |
| /export (symbolically linked to /state/partition1) | remainder of root disk |
| When you use automatic partitioning, the installer will repartition and reformat the first hard drive that the installer discovers. All previous data on this drive will be erased. As stated above, all other drives will be left untouched. The drive discovery process uses the output of cat /proc/partitions to get the list of drives. For example, if the node has an IDE drive (e.g., "hda") and a SCSI drive (e.g., "sda"), generally the IDE drive is the first drive discovered. But, there are instances when a drive you don't expect is the first discovered drive (we've seen this with certain fibre channel connected drives). If you are unsure on how the drives will be discovered in a multi-disk frontend, then use manual partitioning. |
To manually partition your frontend machine, select Disk Druid.
| If you select manual partitioning, you must specify at least 6 GBs for the root partition and you must create a separate /export partition. |
The private cluster network configuration screen allows you to set up the networking parameters for the ethernet network that connects the frontend to the compute nodes.
| It is recommended that you accept the defaults (by hitting the Tab key until the Ok button is highlighted, then hitting the Enter key). |
But for those who have unique circumstances that requires different values for the internal ethernet connection, we have exposed the network configuration parameters.
The public cluster network configuration screen allows you to set up the networking parameters for the ethernet network that connects the frontend to the outside network (e.g., the internet).
The above window is an example of how we configured the external network on one of our frontend machines.
Configure the the Gateway and DNS entries:
Configure the time:
Input the root password:
The frontend will format it's file systems, then it will ask for each of the roll CDs you added at the beginning of the frontend installation.
In the example screen above, insert the Base+HPC+Kernel Roll into the drive and select 'Ok'.
The contents of the CD will now be copied to the frontend's hard disk.
| After all the Rolls are copied, no more user interaction is required. |
After the last roll CD is copied, the packages will be installed:
Finally, the boot loader will be installed and post configuration scripts will be run in the background. When they complete, the frontend will reboot.