CreamCE

A collection of thoughts and events related to setting up the first Birmingham Cream CE.

Introduction

ALICE requires that a Cream CE be available at Birmingham before we can support production. The current plan is to convert epgce3 to a Cream CE and use epgce1 as the Alice VOBox. Before systematically destroying a perfectly good system, it would be prudent to test the Cream CE installation and functionality on epgce1 first!

The plan is to setup epgce1 as a Cream CE. It will support two VOs (ALICE and ATLAS) and will maintain two queues, one for each VO. These queues will point towards the Twin WNs.

Documentation

There are several good resources about Cream CEs and how to install them:

• CHEP 2009 Talk - An introduction to Cream CEs and how they work
• LCG-toCREAM transition guide - summary of Cream functionality which must still be tested. Recommends that LCG CEs continue to be used in parallel to Cream!
• Installation Guide - how to install a Cream CE from scratch.
• Cream CE Twiki - the main pages for Cream CEs.

SL Installation

1. Copied epgmo1:/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/configs/sl46-x86_64-epgce1.cfg to sl46-x86_64-epgce1-cream.cfg and edited to use Cream Kickstart script.
2. Copied epgmo1:/data1/grid/kickstart/sl46-x86_64-epgce1.ks to epgmo1:/data1/grid/kickstart/sl46-x86_64-epgce1-cream.ks. The Cream CE option is now available in the swings menu.
3. Backed up epgce1:/var/log/messages globus* and gridftp* to local system.
4. Backed up epgce1:/etc/grid-security/hostcert.pem and hostkey.pem to epgmo1:/data1/grid/certs/epgce1
5. Removed text relating to jpackage and yrc and java yum packages from cream kickstart file. Changed cgi script used to stop recursive installation to use port 8888.
6. Changed epgce1 pxe boot settings using swings to point towards the sl46-x86_64-epgce1-cream.cfg option.

Yves' cgi script to stop recursive installations appears to have failed. Manually switched swings back to hd boot. The machine also looks like it's publicly accessible, so this should be closed by means of iptables.

-- ChristopherCurtis - 12 Aug 2009