PoD 2.1.3

I am very glad to announce the release of PoD v2.1.3.

Some Highlights of this release

• This version makes it possible to setup a native PROOF client/server connection in PoD environment, rather than to have it packet forwarded. if your workers are behind a firewall than PoD will automatically use its packet forwarding algorithms to maintain the PROOF traffic between server and workers. But if a direct connection is possible, than PoD will setup a native PROOF connection for such a workers. That means, by using PoD you can now setup a dynamic PROOF cluster and get a FULL functionality of PROOF on the native PROOF speed. For example you could now retrieve PROOF logs from a ROOT session or use PROOF's new submerger functionality to speed up the merging phase + all other nice and useful PROOF features.

Minimally required version of ROOT is 5.25.04 or higher. Otherwise PoD will not be able to detect idle status when a native PROOF connection is used and will consider that your session is always idle and will shutdown it after a defined timeout.

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PoD 2.1.2

It is my pleasure to announce the release of PoD 2.1.2.

Some Highlights of this release

• Now PoD officially supports AFS. You can install PoD at CERN. See "PoD at CERN’s AFS".
• It is very important to mention, that the code of PoD's LSF plug-in got a lot of improvements. It is now smarter, faster, and, most importantly, LSF and resource friendly.
• Now users can configure whether to receive LSF jobs' std/err output via emails or files (files - by default). It's configurable in PoD user defaults ($POD_LOCATION/etc/PoD.cfg). Only for the LSF plug-in.
• Now user can configure whether PoD workers should upload log files at the end of the session or not (not - by default). It's configurable in PoD user defaults ($POD_LOCATION/etc/PoD.cfg). Only for the LSF plug-in.
• Now users can define $ROOTSYS as a ROOT version for workers. Workers will use that version of ROOT, which is defined on a PoD server machine (in case of shared home) or WN will use any version defined on it under $ROOTSYS. It's configurable in PoD user defaults ($POD_LOCATION/etc/PoD.cfg), see worker.my_rootsys. Now it is a default value.
• GUI (pod-console) now can detect that there is no user activity. And if it lasts for 15 minutes, it switches all sensors automatically off and shows an information message. This prevents unnecessary system usage when pod-console is left without a user attention.

+ a lot more visible and internal changes...

To find out all changes, which where introduced in this version, please, meet our web site

or

follow the direct link to ReleaseNotes.

Actually you find all needed information on http://pod.gsi.de

PoD works out of the box! Most users won't even need to know the location of PoD user defaults - configuration file ;)

Since 2.1.2 contains important changes, including security fixes, it is very much recommended to start your next dynamic PROOF session with PoD 2.1.2.

BTW, it is about one month since GSI (Darmstadt) switched to a dynamic PROOF cluster using PoD, instead of a static one.

PoD is a toolset, which helps to unleash another powerful side of such a great product like PROOF.

In case of any problem or questions on this version please immediately contact to A.Manafov@gsi.de

You feedback will be always appreciated. The development of PoD is only driven by your feedback!

pod.gsi.de

Today PoD became a bit closer to users ;)

I've just got a dedicated PoD domain: pod.gsi.de

The site isn't complete yet, but has already more than enough information to start to play with PoD.

From now on only POD.GSI.DE should be the entry point for all PoD users.

PoD 2.1.1 on AFS

Yesterday, PoD has been tested at CERN.

We used PoD 2.1.1 and LSF plug-in. The LSF plug-in so-far only supports a shared file system on LSF, the installation therefore was done on AFS.

So, as it was expected ;) PoD worked out of the box! We submitted about 30 jobs. The start-up time for LSF jobs was very vast. I think we got all our workers within 20 seconds.

Now I can confirm, PoD (with LSF plug-in) has been officially tested at CERN.

The only problem we faced was the restriction of AFS.

New version of PoD creates a named-pipe - it is used in the latest thread pool algorithm of PoD. Unfortunately we found out that AFS doesn't support pipes:

Subject: 2.13  Can I create a fifo (aka named pipe) in /afs?

No. AFS does not support "mknod fifofile p".

It is actually very simple to fix in PoD. The patch is already in development and will be released very soon.

Have a nice day!

ALICE Offline week

Anar here ...

This week I gave a PoD presentation on the ALICE offline week.

My slides you can find here ;)

If everything goes as planned, PoD will take place of GSI's static PROOF cluster and will be used on daly basis as a default way of processing PROOF analysis. At least we are going in that direction currently.

Will keep you posting on this one...