Linux.gp Server Upgrade Information

Upgrade Schedule

June 18, 2007 - First two machines upgraded from RH9 to FC5.

September 25, 2007 - Upgrade the second 2 machines to FC5.

January 29, 2008 - Upgrade the final linux.gp machine.

Differences between FC5 and RH9

• ftp is no longer available. Users can use scp or sftp. Man pages for these utilities can be found using the man command
• ssh defaults to version 2 of the protocol. Version 1 is supported, the user can explicitly ask for it via "ssh -1".
• "exmh" is not supported under FC5. For a list of supported email clients see: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~help/mail_news/index.html
• Various languages and applications have different versions installed on RH9 versus FC5:
  1. perl - under FC5 5.8.8 and 5.8.7 are available - under RH9 5.6.1 and 5.8.5 are installed.
  2. python - under FC5 Version 2.4 is installed - under RH9 - Versions 2.4 and 2.2
  3. gcc - Version 4.1 is the default for FC5, while version 3.2.2 is the default for RH9
  4. Matlab - Under FC5 Version 7.3 is installed shild under RH9 - Version 7.1 is installed.
• FC5 will be installed as a 64-bit OS, while RH9 was a 32-bit OS. 32-bit applications can run on a 64-bit OS, but the opposite is not true. That is, 64-bit applications cannot run on a 32-bit machine. If you have developed software on the old 32-bit RH9 linux.gp machines, you may want to recompile that software on the new FC5 linux.gp machines.

Other details

• Please use aliases when accessing these machines. The machine aliases will be modified in the following manner:
  1. The linux.gp alias will point to one of the upgraded FC5 machines
  2. If you explicitly want to use one of the old RH machines use: linux-rh9.gp.cs.cmu.edu.
  3. If you explicitly want to use a new machines you can use linux-fc5.gp.cs.cmu.edu, although linux.gp will work as well.
• The upgraded linux.gp machines will have 4GB of memory, upgraded from 2 GB.
• The file system will be modified somewhat to accommodate the fact that these machines are shared resources. These changes will include increased /tmp space and more space for AFS cache.

If you have any other questions or concerns about the Linux.gp server upgrades please contact the SCS Computing facilities Help Desk by sending mail to help@cs.cmu.edu or by phone at x8-4231.