SARA and Open Source

Open Source Software essential for SARA

Without the availability of high quality Open Source Software, the usage of SARA's systems would be totally different. All systems are equipped with some variety of the Linux operating system, and contain innumerable pieces of Open Source Software: utilities, interpreters, compilers, visualization tools, job management systems etc.

SARA contributes to the Open Source Community

In addition to helping to improve the Open Source Software by submitting detected bugs to the developers, SARA actively participates in a number of Open Source projects:

• email2trac utilities: utilities to facilitate the connection between an e-mail system and the trac ticket system. We use this software to keep track of user questions directed to the helpdesk. The initial setup of this system was made by Daniel Lundin from Edgewall Software. SARA added and maintains a number of extensions extensions. More information
• Job Monarch: Job Monarch is an extension to the Ganglia system monitoring system. Ganglia monitors jobs and system usage of compute clusters and comes with a graphical interface. Job Monarch adds the ability to archive data about jobs, thus creating the possibility to analyse jobs that are already ended. More information
• pbs_python: We developed a Python interface for Torque and Open PBS. Torque and PBS are used to manage jobs on compute clusters. The pbs_python package allows one to develop batch utilities using Python in stead of C. An example is the 'pbsmon' utility available on SARA's Lisa system. More information
• OMSA 2 deb: this software, based on Dell's Open Manage Server Administrator (software to manage compute clusters) has been adapted to Debian and Ubuntu flavours of Linux. More information
• PXE-utilities: PXE stands for Preboot eXecute Environment. This is needed for booting a computer from the network, which is typically done with compute clusters. We developed some utilities to facilitate this method of booting. More information
• SALI: this software is based on SystemImager: a tool to clone a running computer system. We developed SALI to make this cloning process more reliable and easier. More information
• torque_2_deb: this software creates a debian package that can be installed on Debian and Ubuntu systems from the source of the Torque software. This makes it easy for system managers to install the package on their Debian or Ubuntu systems. More information
• Synctool: this is a cluster administration tool, developed almost entirely by SARA employees. It distributes configuration files to (groups of) cluster nodes, and performs additional actions like restarting services or maintaining packages. Synctool is flexible, very easy to learn and offers complete control with excellent preview functionality. More information

Links

• CFengine: www.cfengine.org
• SystemImager: wiki.systemimager.org/index.php/Main_Page
• OpenPBS: www.pbsworks.com
• TORQUE: www.clusterresources.com/products/torque-resource-manager.php
• Ganglia: ganglia.sourceforge.net
• Rocks toolkit: www.rocksclusters.org