Front cover Deploying Linuxx on IBM Eserver pSeriess Clusters System installation and administration Application case studies Cluster management Dino Quintero Prabhakar Attaluri Tomas Baublys Xinghong He Chin Yau Lee Francois Thomas ibm.com/redbooks International Technical Support Organization Deploying Linux on IBM Eserver pSeries Clusters December 2003 SG24-7014-00 Note: Before using this information and the product it supports, read the information in “Notices” on page ix. First Edition (December 2003) This edition applies to Cluster Systems Management (CSM) Version 1, Release 3, Modification 2, General Parallel File System (GPFS) Version 2, Release 2, ESSL 4.1, Parallel ESSL 3.1, SLES 8, and RHES 3. © Copyright International Business Machines Corporation 2003. All rights reserved. Note to U.S. Government Users Restricted Rights -- Use, duplication or disclosure restricted by GSA ADP Schedule Contract with IBM Corp. Contents Notices . ix Trademarks . x Preface . xi The team that wrote this redbook. xi Become a published author . xiv Comments welcome. xiv Chapter 1. Introduction. 1 1.1 Introduction . 2 1.2 Why use Linux on pSeries. 2 1.2.1 Reasons to deploy Linux on pSeries clusters . 2 1.3 POWER4 architecture advantages . 3 1.4 Chapter description . 3 Chapter 2. System installation . 5 2.1 Before you install. 7 2.1.1 Check the prerequisites . 7 2.1.2 Prepare the system . 12 2.1.3 Monitoring the installation . 14 2.1.4 Review your choices . 23 2.2 Step-by-step installation . 25 2.2.1 SLES 8 installation . 26 2.2.2 RHAS 3 installation . 40 2.2.3 Installation tips . 45 2.3 From network to fully unattended installation . 49 2.3.1 Network installation fundamentals . 50 2.3.2 A practical example. 59 2.3.3 Unattended installation . 67 2.4 Where is the BIOS. 79 2.4.1 PowerPC . 79 2.4.2 CHRP . 80 2.4.3 Open Firmware basics . 80 2.4.4 Yaboot. 86 2.5 Post-installation tasks . 88 2.5.1 Checking the installation . 88 2.5.2 Applying SLES 8 patches . 88 2.5.3 Where to get help . 93 © Copyright IBM Corp. 2003. All rights reserved. iii Chapter 3. System administration . 95 3.1 The bash shell . 96 3.2 To YaST or not to YaSt . 97 3.3 Web-based system administration (Webmin) . 100 3.3.1 Webmin installation . 100 3.3.2 Using Webmin. 103 3.4 Runlevels. 104 3.5 Local user management . 105 3.5.1 User distribution . 107 3.5.2 Using sudo . 108 3.6 Logical Volume Manager (LVM) . 113 3.6.1 What is Logical Volume Manager . 113 3.6.2 How LVM works . 113 3.6.3 LVM terminology . 114 3.6.4 Setting up LVM . 115 3.6.5 Using the command line to create LVM . 115 3.6.6 Using YaST for LVM . 116 3.6.7 LVM features. 119 3.7 Software mirroring and LVM . 122 3.7.1 Using YaST to create RAID . 123 3.7.2 Using the command line to create RAID . 127 3.8 File systems . 131 3.8.1 Second extended file system (ext2) . 132 3.8.2 Third extended file system (ext3) . 132 3.8.3 Reiser file system (reiserfs). 133 3.8.4 Journaling File system (jfs) . 134 3.9 RPM management . 134 3.9.1 Naming convention . 135 3.9.2 Querying RPM. 135 3.9.3 Installing and uninstalling RPMs . 138 3.10 System updates. 139 3.10.1 Setting up our own SuSE update server . 139 3.10.2 Online update on Red Hat AS. 141 3.11 System backup . 142 3.12 ssh. 144 3.12.1 Exchanging ssh keys . 144 3.13 DHCP server configuration . 145 3.14 DNS server configuration . 147 3.15 Using iptables for security . 149 3.16 OpenLDAP implementation. 153 3.16.1 Setting up an LDAP server . 153 3.16.2 LDAP client configuration . 155 3.16.3 Defining users in the LDAP directory . 156 iv Deploying Linux on IBM Eserver pSeries Clusters 3.16.4 Managing users. 158 3.16.5 Using SSL/TLS with OpenLDAP . 160 Chapter 4. Linux for pSeries RAS and problem determination. 163 4.1 Linux on pSeries RAS . 164 4.1.1 RunTime abstraction service in PPC64 . 165 4.1.2 IBM diagnostics tools . 168 4.2 System.