All of the instructions here on our pages are supplemental to the official Rocks installation guide. Use this guide to install your front-end and use our information only as a additional help.

• Make sure your hardware meets the Rocks requirements. You can view them here
  • http://www.rocksclusters.org/roll-documentation/base/5.4/getting-started.html
• Download Rocks 5.4 for Linux from their website here. You can download individual rolls or the jumbo DVD disk.
  • http://www.rocksclusters.org/wordpress/?page_id=123.
• Rocks comes with CentOS for the operating system but we opted to use Scientific Linux 5.5 instead. Scientific Linux iso(s) can be downloaded here
  • http://ftp2.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/55/iso/.
• Burn all images to CD or DVD disks.

Private ethernet configuration will most likely be the default that Rocks provides. You will have to get public ethernet information from your provider. Click here to view the network information for the GROW head node.

Enter a password. Try to use a good mix of letters (upper and lower case), numbers, and special characters.

Use a location closest to your cluster location. Leave the NTP Server as the default.

Rocks lets you choose between manual and auto partitioning. Click here to view our head node partitions.

This section enables web access to the front-end so that we can use wordpress and the ganglia web server to monitor the cluster.

Execute the following:

[root@grow-prod ~]# rocks open host firewall localhost network=public protocol=tcp service=www
[root@grow-prod ~]# rocks sync host firewall localhost''

Edit the following file by doing the following:

1. Comment out the UserDir Disable (with “#”)
2. Uncomment the UserDir public_html (remove “#”)
3. Enable users public_html directories by uncommenting the following <Directory> block shown below.

[root@grow-prod ~]# sudo vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

"/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf"

#UserDir disable
UserDir public_html
 
<Directory /home/*/public_html>
    AllowOverride FileInfo AuthConfig Limit
    Options MultiViews Indexes SymLinksIfOwnerMatch IncludesNoExec
    <Limit GET POST OPTIONS>
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </Limit>
    <LimitExcept GET POST OPTIONS>
        Order deny,allow
        Deny from all
    </LimitExcept>
</Directory>

Restart http.

[root@grow-prod ~]# /etc/init.d/httpd restart

Edit the following file:

[root@grow-prod ~]# vi /etc/sysconfig/iptables

Add the following lines to iptables file.

"/etc/sysconfig/iptables"

# Uncomment the lines below to activate web access to the cluster.
-A INPUT -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport https -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport www -j ACCEPT

Restart iptables.

[root@grow-prod ~]# service iptables restart

Edit the ssh_config file.

[root@grow-prod ~]# vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Change the PermitRootLogin to read “without-password”. It may be commented out with “#”. Remove the comment on this line if so. This will allow root to use ssh with public key authentication but not passwords.</fc>

"/etc/ssh/sshd_config"

PermitRootLogin without-password

Restart the service.

[root@grow-prod ~]# /etc/init.d/sshd restart

This Dokuwiki page is maintained by:
Daniel Squires
University of Iowa
Department of Computer Science
Email: daniel-squires@uiowa.edu