Package Installation Guide

Packages for OrangeFS are available in the Fedora repositories. Packages for CentOS are available in Fedora’s EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) repository.  The packages are available on Fedora 27 and later and CentOS 7 and later.

A number of packages are available.  The OrangeFS package provides the client and the orangefs-server package provides the server.  The orangefs-devel package is required to build additional programs against OrangeFS.  There is also an orangefs-fuse package providing FUSE support, which is not described by this guide.

The kernel module is not provided by any of the above packages.  It is now available in mainline Linux.  In Fedora, it is installed by the kernel-core package, which means it is installed by default.  On CentOS, it is not available with the default kernel.  A newer kernel can be obtained from the ELRepo project.

The kernel module requires a userspace client (often called the pvfs2-client-core).  This is provided by the OrangeFS package.  The userspace client is not required to run non-kernel OrangeFS clients, such as the administrative programs also provided by the OrangeFS package.

Install the Packages

Install on Fedora

To install on Fedora, issue the following command:

dnf -y install orangefs orangefs-server

Install on CentOS

To install on CentOS, issue the following commands:

yum -y install epel-release
yum -y install orangefs orangefs-server

Install the ELRepo Kernel

If the kernel module will be used on CentOS, the ELRepo kernel must be installed. To install the ELRepo kernel, issue the following commands:

rpm --import https://www.elrepo.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-elrepo.org
rpm -Uvh http://www.elrepo.org/elrepo-release-7.0-3.el7.elrepo.noarch.rpm
yum -y --enablerepo=elrepo-kernel install kernel-ml

Add Servers

To add servers, complete the following steps:

  1. Install the necessary packages on each machine as described above. An example server configuration is provided in /etc/orangefs/orangefs.conf.  It will suffice for a single-server installation.  If necessary, the default hostname localhost should be changed. Otherwise, if multiple servers will be used, generate a configuration using:

    pvfs2-genconfig

  2. Copy the configuration to each server machine.

    scp -pr HOSTNAME:/etc/orangefs/orangefs.conf /etc/orangefs/orangefs.conf

  3. Initialize the filesystem and start on each machine.

    pvfs2-server -f /etc/orangefs/orangefs.conf
    systemctl start orangefs-server

  4. In the future each server can be started manually.

    systemctl start orangefs-server

  5. Start the server at boot.

    systemctl enable orangefs-server

Add Clients

To add clients, complete the following steps:

  1. Install the necessary packages on each machine as described above.

  2. An example client configuration is provided in /etc/pvfs2tab.  It is commented by default.  Uncomment it by removing the leading ‘#', then change the hostname if necessary.

  1. Change the default mount point, /orangefs, if necessary. This example uses /ofsmnt.

  2. Copy the client configuration to each client machine.

    scp -pr HOSTNAME:/etc/pvfs2tab /etc/pvfs2tab

  3. Test connectivity to the server

    pvfs2-ping -m /ofsmnt

  4. If everything is working correctly, the pvfs2-ping utility will output similar to the following:

    $ pvfs2-ping -m /ofsmnt
    
    (1) Parsing tab file...
    
    (2) Initializing system interface...
    
    (3) Initializing each file system found in tab file: /etc/pvfs2tab...
    
       PVFS2 servers: tcp://localhost:3334
       Storage name: orangefs
       Local mount point: /ofsmnt
       /orangefs: Ok
    
    (4) Searching for /ofsmnt in pvfstab...
    
       PVFS2 servers: tcp://localhost:3334
       Storage name: orangefs
       Local mount point: /ofsmnt
    
       meta servers:
       tcp://localhost:3334
    
       data servers:
       tcp://localhost:3334
    
    (5) Verifying that all servers are responding...
    
       meta servers:
       tcp://localhost:3334 Ok
    
       data servers:
       tcp://localhost:3334 Ok
    
    (6) Verifying that fsid 1 is acceptable to all servers...
    
       Ok; all servers understand fs_id 1
    
    (7) Verifying that root handle is owned by one server...
    
       Root handle: 1048576
         Ok; root handle is owned by exactly one server.
    
    =============================================================
    
    The PVFS2 filesystem at /ofsmnt appears to be correctly configured.
    
    

  5. If the kernel module will not be used, OrangeFS is now installed; otherwise, the kernel module will be used. To load the kernel module, issue the following command:

    modprobe orangefs

  6. Start the client with the following command:

    systemctl start orangefs-client

  7. Next, mount the filesystem.  Change the hostname and mountpoint if necessary.

    mount -t pvfs2 tcp://localhost:3334/orangefs /ofsmnt

The filesystem is now mounted.