QluMan RXEngine 2.0 - Feature Update 10/19

QluMan RXEngine 2.0 - Feature Update 10/19

A large number of new exciting Qlustar features were completed recently and published together with the latest security updates. The most prominent one is RXengine 2.0, a complete redesign of the QluMan Remote Execution engine (graphical parallel shell). It makes cluster management and operation so much easier, transparent and definitely also a lot more fun. The new capabilities are:

• Pre-defined user commands have been added in addition to the existingcluster commands. They are accessible through a common menu together with custom commands. User commands are especially useful for admins managing more than one cluster, since they are stored in a personal sqlite database in the user’s home directory and hence available on all clusters managed.
• Drag&drop support has been implemented for the Command Editor. Thisallows for easy rearrangement of commands as well as cloning from user to cluster commands or vice-versa.
• The RXengine window now has tabs, so one needs only one window for multiple commands. It also has new toggle buttons to determine theamount of command details to display.
• Command history logging, separate for cluster and user commands, has been added, including a viewer from which previous commands can be re-executed or saved to the execution menu.
• A new right has been introduced for clearing commands from the history, so that thecommand history is also a non-manipulable log for auditing in scenarios where clusters are managed by a group of admins.
• Command executions have been added as new events being tracked in the message viewer.
• The chroot path used for images is now customizable. This is mostly needed for high-availability setups of the head-nodes.
• Network FS Mounts configs may now be renamed and cloned
• Renaming of Filesystem Exports is now also possible

If you use QluMan singularity images, make sure you download the latest version.

Other new non-QluMan related stuff is

• CentOS 7.7 support
• Migration from byobu/screen to tmux as the back-end to run non-interactive KVM virtual machines in, like e.g. a virtual FrontEnd node or the demo cluster nodes. byobu/screen was also dropped from Qlustar images. If you want to continue using it on netboot nodes, you need to install it in the chroot(s).
• To facilitate OS updates, Qlustar supplied bash shell functions and some aliases for root on the head-node have been migrated to the qlustar-base package. Please check/perform the manual step ‘10. Adjust root bash shell initialization’ as described in the Release Notes when updating.
• To better support OmniPath clusters, the latest opa-ff (fastfabric) tools were integrated.