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Sun N1 Grid Engine 6.1 Release Notes
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Chapter 1 Sun N1 Grid Engine 6.1 Software Release Notes

The release notes include the following information:

Accessing Documentation

You can view or print the most recent Sun N1 Grid Engine 6.1 documentation from the Sun documentation site at http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/coll/1017.4. The documentation includes the following:

Free 30–Day Email Support

N1 Grid Engine 6.1 is available for free download from the www.sun.com web site. To receive 30–days of free email support for your download, fill in and send the free evaluation questionnaire.

Contents of This Software Package

The Sun N1 Grid Engine 6.1 software distribution is made up of the following components:

  • The grid engine software binary packages, including all daemons, client programs, and libraries. You must load and install one binary package for each operating system architecture you intend to use.

  • The grid engine software common package, containing install scripts, and other architecture-independent utilities.

  • The optional Accounting and Reporting Console (ARCo) software, which is made up of three separate packages:

    • The Sun Java Web Console package. You must select the package appropriate for the operating system architecture on which you plan to run the web console server.

      Note –

      You can also download the Sun Java Web Console 2.2.6 software from the Sun web site at http://www.sun.com/download/products.xml?id=461d58be.

    • The dbwriter package, written in Java and therefore available in only one version.

    • The ARCo module package, usable across different supported architectures.

    Note –

    In order to operate ARCo, you also must set up a PostgreSQL, MySQL, or Oracle database server . PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Oracle are not included in the Sun N1 Grid Engine 6.1 software distribution. For more information, see Chapter 8, Installing the Accounting and Reporting Console, in Sun N1 Grid Engine 6.1 Installation Guide.

The Sun N1 Grid Engine 6.1 software distribution kit contains the following top-level directory hierarchy:

  • 3rd_party – Contains information about freeware, public domain, and public license software

  • bin – Grid engine software executables

  • catman – Online manual pages organized into admin and user commands

  • ckpt – Sample checkpointing configurations

  • dbwriter – DbWriter software used by the accounting and reporting console

  • dtrace – DTrace based monitoring utilities for Solaris 10

  • examples – Sample script files, configuration files, and application programs

  • include – DRMAA header file

  • lib – Required shared libraries and DRMAA JavaTM binding jar file

  • man – Online manual pages in nroff format

  • mpi – A sample parallel environment interface for the MPI message-passing system

  • pvm – A sample parallel environment interface for the PVM message-passing system

  • qmon – Pixmaps, resource, and help files for QMON, the graphical user interface

  • reporting – Accounting and reporting console software

  • util – Some utility shell procedures used for installation tasks and some template grid engine system shutdown and boot scripts

  • utilbin – Some utility programs that are mainly required during the installation

Installing the Sun N1 Grid Engine 6.1 Software

To install the Sun N1 Grid Engine 6.1 software, follow the instructions in Sun N1 Grid Engine 6.1 Installation Guide.

Supported Operating Systems and Platforms

The Sun N1 Grid Engine 6.1 software supports the following operating systems and platforms:

  • Solaris 10, 9 and 8 Operating Systems (SPARC Platform Edition)

  • Solaris 10 and 9 Operating Systems (x86 Platform Edition)

  • Solaris 10 Operating System (x64 Platform Edition)

  • Apple Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), PPC platform

  • Apple Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), x86 platform

  • Hewlett Packard HP-UX 11.00 or higher, 32 bit

  • Hewlett Packard HP-UX 11.00 or higher, 64 bit (including HP-UX on IA64)

  • IBM AIX 5.1, 5.3

  • Linux x86, kernel 2.4, 2.6, glibc >= 2.3.2

  • Linux x64, kernel 2.4, 2.6, glibc >= 2.3.2

  • Linux IA64, kernel 2.4, 2.6, glibc >= 2.3.2

  • Silicon Graphics IRIX 6.5

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 1 or later, Windows 2000 Server with Service Pack 3 or later, or Windows 2000 Professional with Service Pack 3 or later

Using N1 Grid Engine 6.1 with an Existing 6.0 Cluster

You can install the N1 Grid Engine 6.1 software in an environment that has an existing N1 Grid Engine 6.0 cluster. To run the 6.1 software in parallel with an existing N1 Grid Engine environment, follow these rules:

  • Use a different $SGE_ROOT directory and different TCP ports for the qmaster and execution daemons.

  • Do not select to install a system-wide startup script during manual or automatic installation. Installing a system-wide startup script would overwrite your N1 Grid Engine 6.0 startup script for qmaster and execution daemons.

  • If you decide to install two execution daemons on one host, be sure to use a different “gid_range” from the global/local cluster configuration.

  • On Microsoft Windows systems, you can install the optional “N1 Grid Engine Helper Service” only for one Grid Engine instance. If you already had installed this service for N1 Grid Engine 6.0, you may not install it for N1 Grid Engine 6.1 and, thus, you cannot run jobs that require a GUI on the Windows desktop for N1 Grid Engine 6.1.

  • Verify that variables point to the correct instance of N1 Grid Engine. Specifically, check your port settings, your PATH variable, and the LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable. For Solaris and Linux, LD_LIBRARY_PATH does not need to be set anymore.

New Features in Sun N1 Grid Engine 6.1 Software

The Sun N1 Grid Engine 6.1 software includes several new features and expanded functionality.

Flexible Resource Quotas

The resource quotas feature enables you to limit the maximum number of running jobs per user, user group, and projects on arbitrary resources like queues, hosts, memory, and software licenses. A firewall-like rule syntax allows an unprecedented configuration flexibility.

For information about resource quotas, see Chapter 6, Managing Resource Quotas, in Sun N1 Grid Engine 6.1 Administration Guide. For additional details, see the qquota(1), sge_resource_quota(5), and qconf(1) man pages.

Master Bottleneck Analysis Using Solaris 10 DTrace

If your master component runs on a Solaris 10 machine, you can use the DTrace-based master monitor diagnosis utility to monitor the master and look for any bottlenecks. For more information, see Using DTrace for Performance Tuning in Sun N1 Grid Engine 6.1 Administration Guide and the $SGE_ROOT/dtrace/README-dtrace.txt file.

New Command Options

You can now use the-wd option to specify the job working directory for any of the following commands: qsub, qalter, qsh, qrsh and qmon. For more information, see the man pages.

Support for Additional Operating Systems

The Sun N1 Grid Engine 6.1 release adds support for the following operating systems:

  • Linux on Itanium (IA64)

  • Apple Mac OS X on the x86 platform

Support for Additional Database Software

ARCo supports the following database servers: PostgreSQL 7.4 - 8.2, MySQL 5.0, and Oracle 9i, 10.0, 10.1, and 10.2.

Other Changes

  • Resource matching for string and host complex attributes has been extended to support a flexible boolean expression grammar (logical AND, OR and NOT operators).

  • The Grid Engine Accounting and Reporting Console (ARCo) now can write the reporting data to the MySQL database.

  • You no longer need to set the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH on Solaris and Linux when using N1 Grid Engine commands. This change improves command execution and helps to avoid conflicts with system installed shared libraries, such as SSL and Berkeley DB libraries.

  • The complex variable display_win_gui now enables you to schedule jobs only to Windows hosts that are running the “N1 Grid Engine Helper Service.” The helper service allows background applications to display their graphical user interfaces on the visible desktop of the Windows host.

  • Minor changes to QMON to improve usability.

Changed Features in N1 Grid Engine 6.1 Software

Changed Command Options

For performance reasons, the default behavior of the qstat -u option has changed. Before N1 Grid Engine 6.1, qstat without the -u option printed the jobs of all users. Beginning with N1 Grid Engine 6.1, qstat without the -u prints only the jobs of the user who executed qstat.

To enforce the old qstat behavior, administrators can add -u *to the cluster-wide $SGE_ROOT/$SGE_CELL/common/sge_qstat file . Users can enforce the previous behavior by adding -u * to the user private file searched at $HOME/.sge_qstat.

Software Support Changes in Sun N1 Grid Engine 6.1 Software

The Sun N1 Grid Engine 6.1 software no longer supports the following operating systems:

  • Solaris 7 (SPARC Platform Edition)

  • Solaris 8 (x86 Platform Edition)

  • IBM AIX 4.3

  • Apple MacOS X 10.2 (Jaguar) and 10.3 (Panther) on PowerPC (PPC) Platform

In addition, the Sun N1 Grid Engine 6.1 software does not support the Grid Engine Management Module (GEMM) for Sun Control Station.

Known Limitations and Workarounds

The following sections contain information about product irregularities discovered during testing, but too late to fix or document.

Known Limitations of Sun N1 Grid Engine 6.1 Software

This Sun N1 Grid Engine 6.1 software release has the following limitations:

  • Sun N1 Grid Engine 6.1 Update 5 – When the installation is started as root and you choose an administrative user that is different from the owner of the $SGE_ROOT directory, the installation fails when creating the cluster name.

    Workaround – Before you start the installation, change the owner of the $SGE_ROOT directory to the administrative user that you want to use. For example, if the $SGE_ROOT directory is /sge and you want to use the administrative user sgeadmin, use the following command:


    # chown sgeadmin /sge

    After the ownership is changed, sgeadmin is suggested as the administrative user during the installation. Just accept that suggestion.

  • The stack size for sge_qmaster should be set to 16 MBytes. sge_qmaster might not run with the default values for stack size on the following architectures: IBM AIX and HP UX 11.

  • You should set a high file descriptor limit in the kernel configuration on hosts that are designated to run the sge_qmaster daemon. You might want to set a high file descriptor limit on the shadow master hosts as well. A large number of available file descriptors enables the communication system to keep connections open instead of having to constantly close and reopen them. If you have many execution hosts, a high file descriptor limit significantly improves performance. Set the file descriptor limit to a number that is higher than the number of intended execution hosts. You should also make room for concurrent client requests, in particular for jobs submitted with qsub -sync or when you are running DRMAA sessions that maintain a steady communication connection with the master daemon. Refer to you operating system documentation for information about how to set the file descriptor limit.

  • The number of concurrent dynamic event clients is limited by the number of file descriptors. The default is 99. Dynamic event clients are jobs submitted with the qsub -sync command and a DRMAA session. You can limit the number of dynamic event clients with the qmaster_params global cluster configuration setting. Set this parameter to MAX_DYN_EC=n. See the sge_conf(5) man page for more information.

  • The ARCo module is available only for the Solaris Sparc, Solaris Sparc 64 bit, Solaris x86, Solaris x64, Linux x86, and Linux 64 bit kernels.

  • Only a limited set of predefined queries is currently shipped with ARCo. Later releases will include more comprehensive sets of predefined queries.

  • Jobs requesting the amount INFINITY for resources are not handled correctly with respect to resource reservation. INFINITY might be requested by default in case no explicit request for a certain resource has been made. Therefore it is important to request that all resources be explicitly taken into account for resource reservation.

  • Resource reservation currently takes only pending jobs into account. Consequently, jobs that are in a hold state due to the submit options -a time and -hold_jid joblist, and are thus not pending, do not get reservations. Such jobs are treated as if the -R n submit option were specified for them.

  • Berkeley DB requires that the database files reside on the local disk, if qmaster is not running on Solaris 10 and uses a NFSv4 mount (full NFSv4 compliant clients and servers from other vendors are also supported, but have not yet been tested.) If the sge_qmaster cannot be run on the file server intended to store the spooling data (for example, if you want to use the shadow master facility), a Berkeley DB RPC server can be used. The RPC server runs on the file server and connects with the Berkeley DB sge_qmaster instance. However, Berkeley DB's RPC server uses an insecure protocol for this communication and so it presents a security problem. Do not use the RPC server method if you are concerned about security at your site. Use sge_qmaster local disks for spooling instead and, for fail-over, use a high availability solution such as Sun Cluster, which maintains host local file access in the fail-over case.

  • Busy QMON with large array task numbers. If large array task numbers are used, you should use “compact job array display” in the QMON Job Control dialog box customization. Otherwise the QMON GUI will cause high CPU load and show poor performance.

  • The automatic installation option does not provide full diagnostic information in case of installation failures. If the installation process aborts, check for the presence and the contents of an installation log file in qmaster-spool-dir/install_hostname_timestamp.log or in /tmp/install.pid.

  • On IBM AIX, HP/UX 11, and SGI IRIX 6.5 systems, two different binaries are provided for sge_qmaster, spooldefaults, and spoolinit. One of these binaries is for the Berkeley DB spooling method, the other binary is for the classic spooling method. The names of these binaries are binary.spool_db and binary.spool_classic.

    To change to the desired spooling method, modify three symbolic links before you install the master host. Do the following:


    # cd sge-root/bin/arch
# rm sge_qmaster
# ln -s sge_qmaster.spool_classic sge_qmaster

# cd sge-root/utilbin/arch
# rm spooldefaults spoolinit
# ln -s spooldefaults.spool_classic spooldefaults
# ln -s spoolinit.spool_classic spoolinit

  • The default Mac OS X installation does not include the OpenMotif library that QMON needs. You can get the OpenMotif library for the PowerPC and x86 architectures from various web sites, such as http://www.ist-inc.com/DOWNLOADS/openmotif_download.html. You can also find information about how to install packages that have been ported to Mac OS X at http://www.macports.org.

  • PDF export in ARCo requires a lot of memory. Huge reports can result in a OutOfMemoryException when they are exported into PDF.

    Workaround – Increase the JVM heap size for the Sun Java Web Console The following command the set max. heap size to 512 MB.

    # smreg add -p java.options="... -Xmx512M ..."

    A restart of the Sun Java Web Console is necessary to make the change effective as in this command:

    # smcwebserver restart

  • For DBWriter (part of ARCo) the 64-Bit support of the Java virtual machine needs to be installed on Solaris Sparc 64-bit and Solaris x64, and Linux 64-bit kernels.

  • When you use Java bindings with DRMAA, verify that the LD_LIBRARY_PATH is set correctly.

    Note –

    If you are using a 32–bit Java Virtual Machine (JVM), you must set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH to the 32–bit shared DRMAA library (for example, $SGE_ROOT/lib/sol-sparc), even when your application actually runs on a 64–bit operating system platform.

  • The N1 Grid Engine 6.1 version of the drmaa.jar file is not compatible with the previous drmaa.jar file. The old drmaa.jar file has been renamed to drmaa-0.5.jar.

  • For a fully-featured automatic installation (not using CSP), you must grant the root user permissions to remote login through rsh or ssh without asking for a password. This enables the installation script to start the installation on the remote hosts. If this is not configured correctly, you have to log into each execution host and manually execute the automatic installation using the following command: 


    inst_sge -x -auto <conf-file> -noremote

Known Limitations and Workarounds for the Microsoft Windows Platform

  • The installation of Services For UNIX (SFU) 3.5 requires a good administrative understanding of the Windows platform and its integration into a UNIX environment. For an overview of SFU, see Appendix A, Microsoft Services For UNIX, in Sun N1 Grid Engine 6.1 Installation Guide. You can find additional technical information and documentation about SFU on the Microsoft web site at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu/default.asp.

    Username mapping, NFS mounts, and hostname resolving in SFU require special attention to successfully install the Grid Engine execution daemon, submit host functionality, and integration of Windows hosts into a N1 Grid Engine cluster.

  • You cannot install a Windows execution host remotely with the auto installation procedure. You can use the auto installation procedure through the inst_sge -noremote command to install locally.

  • You cannot submit a job from a Windows submit host as the Windows “local Administrator” to a Unix or Linux execution host. However, you can submit a job as local Administrator from Windows to Windows, and you can submit as user root from Unix or Linux to Windows, Unix, or Linux execution hosts.