[SSI-devel] OpenSSI 0.9.95 for Red Hat 9

[Brian J. W. <Bri...@hp...>]

Let's try again without crazy line-wrapping. ;)

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OpenSSI 0.9.95 is the first release to support Red Hat 9. It is also
the first to support the GRUB bootloader, rather than LILO. Yet another
first is its support for NFS server. Also new to this release is the
ability to shutdown a single node with the clusternode_shutdown command.

Quite a few user-visible enhancements have accompanied these firsts.
The old cluster_mkinitrd command has been replaced by an enhanced
mkinitrd that can generate both SSI and ordinary non-SSI ramdisks.

The old node_hostname command is obsolete. Its functionality is now
provided by nodename and clustername commands.

The old cluster_lilo command has been replaced by ksync. Like the sync
command, it is not necessary to run ksync as long as you gracefully
bring down your cluster with the shutdown command. Running ksync,
however, gives you peace of mind that your updated kernel and ramdisk is
distributed to every node with a local boot device.

Clusterwide RC script support has been significantly enhanced. For more
information about what it will ultimately look like, see
docs/rc-design-notes.

Linux has a mechanism that lets you send file descriptors between
processes with Unix domain sockets. Now with OpenSSI 0.9.95, you can do
this between processes on different nodes. The semantics are the same.

Some restrictions on what processes are allowed to migrate have been
loosened. For example, a pinned process can now be explicitly migrated
by someone with the proper permissions.

Various bugs have been fixed, including NFS client mounting and an
fsync() bug that affected sendmail. Proper permissions checking is now
done for remote signals and System V IPC. Also, a rename() of a CFS file
is now consistent between nodes. See the ChangeLog for a more complete
list of bugs fixed.

OpenSSI 0.9.95 is available at OpenSSI.org. Currently, the instructions
only tell you how to install it on a fresh Red Hat 9 system. Tommorrow I
hope to upload instructions for how to upgrade from a Red Hat 8 system
with OpenSSI 0.9.9 to a Red Hat 9 system with OpenSSI 0.9.95.

Enjoy,

Brian