September 17, 2010

PoD 2.2

Anar here...

After several months of development :) I am pleased to announce the release of PoD 2.2!

Highlights of this release
  • A major highlight of this release is the first implementation of the PoD with SSH plug-in (see User's Manual, Chapter 11. SSH plug-in).
  • The PoD distribution package is even more smaller now, it is only 3 MB :)
  • A heavily revised build system, should help users to build and to install PoD from the source code conveniently.
  • PoD doesn't use xrootd anymore. Instead xproofd is used. Starting with ROOT version 5.24/00 an executable named xproofd is also available under $ROOTSYS/bin. The xproofd executable is built out of the same main program used to build the xrootd executable. However, it loads by default the XrdProofdProtocol instead of the data-serving protocol XrdXrootdProtocol. The purpose of this daemon is to simplify the configuration when data-serving is not needed or it is handled differently.
  • Implemented an automatic execution of a custom (user specified) environment script on workers before PoD processes start. (see User's Manual, section 5.2.)
  • Revised PoD workers package and algorithms helped to reduce requirements and decrease start up time.

May 27, 2010

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.

May 19, 2010

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.

April 8, 2010

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...

January 18, 2010

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.