Minutes of the Physics Computing Liaisons for 2003/7/11.

Or: how to respond to the changing of Redhat's ways

Brett Viren gave an introduction to the problem and some potential ways out. The slides are available here as [PDF], [PS] or [GROFF source] (needs this).

Tom Throwe reported from HEPiX:

Negotiations on cheaper RHEL entitlements ranged starting from $100 and going down to $25 per node per year.
CERN was pushing a $0/node/year + each site negotiating a support contract for "real" problems (as apposed to "how do I hook up this printer" type problems) + each site would buy RHEN Satellite Server (SS) entitlements.
CERN will support its version of RH 7.3 until end 2004.

Tom Schlagel reported from SLCCC

If HEP community commits to purchasing 25,000 entitlements RH will offer then at $55/node/year (same for workstations and cluster nodes).
An additional $25/node/year for RHEN entitlements.
A satellite server for ~$30k/year.
There was some talk of a geometry reduction in per node prices for cluster based on total number of cluster nodes.
Some talk of getting 1 satellite server for the 10 or so labs. This brings up issue of control and access as one of the benefits of an SS is to get at the underlying database to do things like verify security postures.
RH wants some commitment to the number of entitlements by end of Nov 03. It is unknown if this will happen.
There will be a BNL-wide meeting next Thursday to discuss this whole issue further, (eg. see here).
ITD will do what it can to support RHEL/RHEN for those who want it.

RCF decisions (Ofer Rind, Tom Throwe)

The RCF follows a punctuated equilibrium upgrade strategy. They stay at one version, even when vulnerabilities are found, untill the next version, usually a major upgrade, is vetted.
They will stay at RH 8.0 for now and will wait and see how things develop.

NUHEP decisions (Brett Viren)

Unless there is some strong rational given, NUHEP will be converted over to Debian.
Phyppro1 (Physics web/ftp/mirror server) will be done first followed one by one with the others.
The issues of CERNLIB and ROOT was raised. CERNLIB, PAW and GEANT are now in Debian (testing/unstable) and will be installed. ROOT is packaged but hasn't been let into Debian yet due to licence concerns, but it will also be installed. In general, an attempt to keep all things the same from a user point of view will be made.

General discussion:

On the issue of CERN and FNAL rolling their own distributions based on compiled-from-source RHEL 3.0 and the possibility that SLAC will to, it seemed natural that they band together to produce a generic version on which each could then customize. It would then be possible for BNL to feed this into a RHEN Satellite Server. It is still unclear what entitlements must be paid in such a scenario.
On the issue of support for proprietary 3rd party software, in particular Objectivity, it was noted that it was a BNLer who did the porting to Redhat Linux. Redhat Linux was chosen as it was the dominant flavor at the time. This makes some proprietary-support arguments against non-Redhat distributions specious.
LANL has a RHEN SS and Tom Schlagel will check on some of the details on how and what can be run with it.