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SoftDrive on the HPC Cloud

SoftDrive is a service of the Dutch National e-infrastructure to facilitate software distribution over many machines. It was developed for use on the Grid infrastructure where managing your application environment is more challenging than on the HPC Cloud. SoftDrive uses CernVM-FS (cvmfs).

When to use SoftDrive?

You should probably consider using SoftDrive on the HPC Cloud if you want to make your software available on multiple platforms such as grids, classical clusters, and public or private clouds. Softdrive allows you to install and maintain only a single software tree while using it from various locations.

Instructions

The instructions here are tested in the standard Ubuntu 14.04 Server appliance from the AppMarket. They are probably also valid for other Ubuntu versions and Debian-derived distributions. The setup consists of the following steps:

  • Install dependencies
  • Create directories
  • Download and install cvmfs packages
  • Configure fuse
  • Configure cvmfs
  • Configure autofs

Install dependencies

The following command installs six packages (and their dependencies) that are needed for cvmfs:

 # apt-get install attr autofs gawk gdb uuid uuid-dev

Create directories

You need to create the directories that will be used for the cvmfs mount point and cache folder:

# mkdir /cvmfs /var/lib/cvmfs

Download and install cvmfs packages

Download the latest cvmfs and cvsmf-config-none .deb packages from the CernVM website. At the time of writing:

# wget https://ecsft.cern.ch/dist/cvmfs/cvmfs-config/cvmfs-config-none_1.0-1_all.deb
# wget https://ecsft.cern.ch/dist/cvmfs/cvmfs-2.2.0/cvmfs_2.2.0_amd64.deb

Install the packages using dpkg:

# dpkg --install cvmfs-config-none_1.0-1_all.deb cvmfs_2.2.0_amd64.deb

Configure FUSE

Add a line with allow_other to /etc/fuse.conf.

Add the cvmfs user to the group fuse:

# addgroup cvmfs fuse

Configure cvmfs

Create the file /etc/cvmfs/default.local with the following contents:

CVMFS_NFILES=32768
CVMFS_REPOSITORIES=softdrive.nl
CVMFS_QUOTA_LIMIT=2000
CVMFS_HTTP_PROXY="http://squid.grid.sara.nl:3128"

Create the file /etc/cvmfs/config.d/softdrive.nl.conf with the following contents:

CVMFS_SERVER_URL=http://cvmfs01.nikhef.nl/cvmfs/@fqrn@
CVMFS_PUBLIC_KEY=/etc/cvmfs/keys/softdrive.nl.pub

Finally, create the directory /etc/cvmfs/keys and add the file /etc/cvmfs/keys/softdrive.nl.pub with the following contents:

-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----
MIIBIjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOCAQ8AMIIBCgKCAQEA481/kCXbrVtLuzcFZ2uO
EmiAKx28qXIkonPwr/gSmqQ8k1zQA7dKK5YZwZSbVwgYqvhvW6i3vKWLGVDj+elH
1u8uumPzzlAJHrS1XoR8rY4xUULjQBvV9HuJxE6OK4ZEZPvQmeGmjXd446c8J5cv
BQFtaonRnrxAbtO+Z0KtzsNOzBNFegu9z+lT7/fxV17Qh10w5IKQjm/v6jPdj1ME
CrG4QW2S9+Y+7YzbRP5QYaE4cl5cBI3Yb048ufgLJMfX3++uqwGM+rqNs/CzHvsW
dO6Jznr9EbzqbIrTsFeUThNmsGPObxOT3VmB0BTTjrZSYjgf8oEE4hdhgNQgh7vs
OwIDAQAB
-----END PUBLIC KEY-----

Configure autofs

Add a line with /cvmfs /etc/auto.cvmfs to /etc/auto.master.

Restart autofs to use the new settings:

# service autofs restart

Autofs will automatically mount the SoftDrive diretory the first time you access it. For example by doing ls /cvmfs/softdrive.nl.

Using SoftDrive

Software installed on the SoftDrive service is now available on your VM in the /cvmfs/softdrive.nl folder.

To add software to the SoftDrive directory you need to have a SURFsara account with membership of the cvmfs group. Contact the SURFsara Helpdesk for this. More information can be found on the Grid documentation of SoftDrive.