PoD 2.1.4

Anar here...

It is always a pleasure to announce a new release of PoD. Yesterday night I have released PoD 2.1.4.

Some Highlights of this release

• A new build system has been introduced. The source code of sub-modules of PoD is now shipped along with the PoD distribution. Now PoD is much more easer to install and to maintain. Please see a how-to-install page in user's manual.
• Now PoD is shipped with a new plug-in. Starting from this release we implemented and will support a PBS/Torque plug-in. This opens a possibility to our users to submit PoD jobs to PBS resource management system. We support PBS (torque) and PBSPro, with both shared and not shared home file systems.
• PoD got a new command line interface (CLI). Using PoD's CLI users will be able to start, stop PoD server, retrieve its status, submit PoD jobs to a different resource management systems, check status and a number of available PoD/PROOF workers and more... Please see PoD user's manual for more details.
• PoD gLite plug-in and glite-api-wrapper library is now supporting gLite UI 3.2.

PoD Home

Release Notes

PROOF Home

PROOF progress dialog window

Yesterday Gerri has implemented a useful patch in PROOF. From the now on it is possible to switch the PROOF progress dialog off.

Add method TProof::SetProgressDialog(Bool_t on = kTRUE) to disable the progress dialog
window while preserving graphics from the final actions in Terminate. This may be useful
when X over network is slow. To disable the dialog the call

proof->SetProgressDialog(0)

has to be placed before Process(...).

Many users, who does PROOF remotely will find this as an extremely handy feature. ;)

The patch was committed as a revision 33562.

TORQUE/PBS plug-in

Anar here...

I've just finished the first stable version of a TORQUE/PBS plug-in for PoD.

One more plug-in which will be shipped by default with PoD distributions, additionally to gLite and LSF.

Worth to mention, that the LSF plug-in is already in production for ALICE users at GSI.

From now on PoD user can also make use of PBS facilities and setup private PROOF clusters on the fly using PoD.

The plug-in will be released with PoD v2.1.4 and currently it is in a beta.

I am looking for test users, who has access to PBS clusters and want help and try/test PoD. Any feedback is appreciated. ;)

If you want to test PoD (with pbs), just drop me an email on A.Manafov@gsi.de.

You can also just download the latest nightly and give it a try. More information here.

BTW, v2.1.4 will also come with a new command line interface. So now finally we have both, GUI and CLI ;)

The next plug-in is already in development - it is SSH plug-in. With help of it, any machine on which you have ssh access can become your PROOF worker on demand. ;)

See you soon...

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.

PoD Home

Release Notes

PROOF Home

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!