SUMMARY
The ARCC completed a downtime maintenance window on both the Stokes and Newton clusters from August 5-9, 2024 to upgrade from CentOS 7.x to Rocky Linux 8.x. All compute nodes were re-installed and newer versions of most software re-compiled/re-installed. Note that many older versions of software were not transitioned, and also note not all software was transitioned.
However, if your research requires a particular version of software that is no longer available, please do let us know by submitting a ticket with the subject "Rocky Software Re-install" and we will attempt to support such requests (not all software can always run on newer versions of operating systems).
As a reminder, you can view what software is available by running the "module avail" command at the terminal prompt after logging in.
Although we performed some testing of the clusters, there is a lot of software supported and we are not always intimately familiar with all of it. This is a significant upgrade to the clusters that must be done rarely (but must be done). We kindly ask for you to notify us (at the e-mail address above) of any issues you may find and please be patient while we address any concerns that may arise. Thank you so much from the ARCC staff!
DETAILS
What happened?
The primary purpose of this maintenance window was to upgrade the Stokes and Newton clusters to Rocky Linux (version 8.7).
Why did the clusters switch from CentOS to Rocky Linux?
Red Hat announced in December 2020 that CentOS would become an "upstream" product, meaning that it is meant more for testing components for the final release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux itself (CentOS 7 reached end-of-life on June 30, 2024). This has caused a need to switch distributions of Linux and most clusters are choosing Rocky Linux. For example, the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) selected Rocky Linux for its Lonestar6 cluster (https://tacc.utexas.edu/news/latest-news/2022/03/01/10-things-know-about-new-tacc-resources-texas-researchers/). The UCF ARCC reviewed Rocky Linux in 2023 and found that it would work well.
How does this affect Anaconda environments?
All Anaconda environments will likely have to be re-installed/re-created. The ARCC has ensured that popular system-wide environments previously installed are still available; however, users that maintain their own may have to re-create them.
What about effects to other software?
GCC (glibc) was updated and you may have to re-compile any software you specifically compile yourself. We do not believe that other software will be affected other than moving to later versions. However, ARCC staff did compile/install newer (usually the latest version but not always) versions of software used on the clusters. Old versions were "left behind" and old software that received little/no use was not kept initially. However, as stated above, if you have a need for a specific version of some software, please do reach out to us and we are willing to investigate it for you.