Source Build Guide

This topic provides an example of a complete installation of OrangeFS from source in a single procedure. It can also be used as a Quick Start reference for experienced users who wish to bypass the more detailed and segmented instructions in the earlier topics of this manual.

If your distro includes the OrangeFS kernel module, you may skip tasks related to building and installing the kernel module. To determine if your distro includes the OrangeFS kernel module, issue this command:

modprobe orangefs

You must install OrangeFS every time you update the kernel.

Assumptions

The following assumptions apply to this example installation:

• Network protocol is TCP/IP

• Uses Default security mode

• Any firewall must be configured to allow clients and servers to communicate.

Build Prerequisites

Prerequisites for RHEL, SUSE and Ubuntu are documented below.

RHEL

The system on which you build OrangeFS requires eight additional Linux software packages. Following are the names for these packages on a system running RHEL:

To automatically install these packages, enter the following command:

yum -y install gcc flex bison openssl-devel libattr-devel kernel-devel perl make

SUSE

Following are the names for the packages required on a system running SUSE:

To automatically install these packages, enter the following command using zypper:

zypper install automake gcc bison flex kernel-source kernel-syms libopenssl-devel libattr-devel

cp /boot/config-`uname -r` /usr/src/linux-`uname -r | sed s/-[\d].*//`/.config
cd /usr/src/linux-`uname -r | sed s/-[\d].*//`
make oldconfig
make modules_prepare
make prepare
ln -s /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build/Module.symvers /lib/modules/`uname -r`/source

Ubuntu

Following are the names for the packages required on a system running Ubuntu: | | |—| | automake | | bison | | libattr-devel | | build-essential | | flex | | libattrl |

To automatically install these packages, enter the following command using apt:

apt install automake build-essential bison flex libattr1 libattr1-dev

Installation Steps

To build OrangeFS, complete the following steps:

1. Download and extract the OrangeFS software:

• Download the source from
  http://orangefs.com/download/.

• Extract the source tar archive:

  tar -xzf orangefs-VERSION.tar.gz

• Change Directory (cd) to the extracted directory:

  cd orangefs-VERSION

• Configure the OrangeFS installation location and the path of the system kernel:

  If using a distro which includes the upstream OrangeFS kernel module, omit --with-kernel=KERNEL_PATH

  ./configure --prefix=/opt/orangefs --with-kernel=KERNEL_PATH --with-db-backend=lmdb

  where…

  KERNEL_PATH = path to kernel source

  Examples:
  RHEL: /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build
  SUSE: /lib/modules/`uname -r`/source
  Ubuntu 16.04 (or earlier): /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build

  If not using the upstream kernel module, you will need to rebuild OrangeFS anytime you update the kernel.

2. Build and install the software:

make
make install

If using a distro which does not include the upstream OrangeFS kernel module, type the following additional commands:

make kmod
make kmod_prefix=/opt/orangefs kmod_install

3. Create a server configuration file

by running the automatic file generation program (pvfs2-genconfig) and answering the prompts.

/opt/orangefs/bin/pvfs2-genconfig /opt/orangefs/etc/orangefs-server.conf

This places a server configuration file (named orangefs-server.conf in this example) in the etc directory.

Add Clients (Kernel Module)

1. To add the software required for an OrangeFS Linux client interface

Change Directory (cd) to /opt on the Client system and copy the /opt/orangefs directory from the Build system:

scp -rp HOSTNAME:/opt/orangefs /opt

where…

HOSTNAME = host name of the build system

2. Insert the client kernel module.

This module (pvfs2.ko) resides in the OrangeFS installation directory several directory layers deep. To insert the module without specifying a long path, include this find statement:   

insmod ‘find /opt/orangefs -name pvfs2.ko‘

3. Start the client process on each Client system:

/opt/orangefs/sbin/pvfs2-client -p /opt/orangefs/sbin/pvfs2-client-core

4. Create a directory in the Client system’s /mnt directory

This is where the client will mount OrangeFS:

mkdir /mnt/orangefs

5. Determine the URL of the OrangeFS server you will mount.

You can retrieve this information from the orangefs-server.conf file. For example, the first server URL listed in that file can be extracted with the following command:

grep "Alias " /opt/orangefs/etc/orangefs-server.conf | awk '{ print $3 }' | head -n 1

The format to use for server URL is protocol://hostname:port.

Example:  tcp://server1:3334

6. Create a file named pvfs2tab in the /etc directory

This tells the system how to mount OrangeFS. Assign read access to the file.

echo "tcp://server1:3334/orangefs /mnt/orangefs pvfs2" >> /etc/pvfs2tab

Add Servers

1. Add the required software to an OrangeFS server

Change Directory (cd) to /opt on the Server system and copy the /opt/orangefs directory from the Build system:

scp -rp HOSTNAME:/opt/orangefs /opt

where…

HOSTNAME = host name of the build system

2. Initialize the server storage space on each server:

/opt/orangefs/sbin/pvfs2-server -f /opt/orangefs/etc/orangefs-server.conf -a ALIAS_NAME

3. Start the server processes on each server:

/opt/orangefs/sbin/pvfs2-server /opt/orangefs/etc/orangefs-server.conf -a ALIAS_NAME

Mount the File System

Mount OrangeFS through the server URL you retrieved earlier:

mount -t pvfs2 tcp://server1:3334/orangefs /mnt/orangefs