[MPICH] MPICH use in an AFS + K5 environment.

[Rusty Lusk]

There is no fundamental reason why ssh is required for starting the  
mpd's.   They can be started "by hand" on each machine, for example,  
as described in the Installation and User's Guides, or in any  
specially-designed way that will work on your environment.   You (or  
some software) starts one, ask it for the port where it is listening  
(or you tell it the port), then the others are started (in some way)  
and told where (host, port) to contact the first one (or any other  
existing one).  The new mpd's enter the ring of existing mpd's with  
accept/connect.  The script mpdboot carries this out via ssh, but if  
you want to do it some other way, then there is nothing in the mpd  
code to prevent it.

Rusty Lusk

On Mar 29, 2007, at 2:52 PM, Bill Stivers wrote:

> I'm working on that aspect;  In my prototype machines running  
> Solaris 10 I'm using PAM modules and configurations developed at  
> ANL for better K5 integration.  On those systems I'm seeing more or  
> less acceptable behavior, but I have but the two prototype  
> machines.  The spec for the class is a minimum of 20-30 nodes such  
> that students get the full MPI experience.
>
> Because of some legacy tie-ins in our pam configuration on the  
> solaris 9 lab systems, I'm having issues getting ssh-agent to pass  
> keys correctly, such that K5 tickets are generated, such that AFS  
> tokens are generated properly, such that the filesystem data is  
> visible across all the potential nodes in the ring, and such that  
> the mpds can be started dynamically by users running their jobs.   
> What I'm basically looking for is any experiences anyone's had in  
> managing getting openssh to behave better in this configuration in  
> its ties to kerberos, or, barring that, a scheme that might allow  
> functionality without the rsh/ssh component but from the FAQs, I  
> get that there is no possibility of functionality the latter way.
>
> I hope this clarifies a little, and thank you for taking the time  
> to drop me a line.  I'm much obliged to you.
>
> --B
>
> On Mar 29, 2007, at 10:32 AM, Rajeev Thakur wrote:
>
>> Is it possible to start a remote process using ssh or some such  
>> command in
>> your environment?
>>
>> Rajeev
>>
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: owner-mpich-discuss at mcs.anl.gov
>>> [mailto:owner-mpich-discuss at mcs.anl.gov] On Behalf Of Bill Stivers
>>> Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2007 3:23 PM
>>> To: mpich-discuss at mcs.anl.gov
>>> Subject: [MPICH] MPICH use in an AFS + K5 environment.
>>>
>>> I've searched through the FAQs and through a decent hunk of the
>>> mailing list archives, but I've had no success thus far, so I wanted
>>> to post a question.
>>>
>>> Right now, I'm in process of attempting to set up an MPICH ring on
>>> some of our lab workstations to leverage the lost cycles and to
>>> support a class that uses the software as its primary
>>> environment.  I
>>> was wondering if anyone had any recipes to ease the process of
>>> managing starting the mpds in the ring, given the constraints on
>>> filesystem access implicit in using AFS for user filestore, and K5
>>> credentials feeding production of tokens.
>>>
>>>
>>> ---
>>> Bill Stivers
>>> IC Unix Lab and Systems Administrator
>>> University of California at Santa Cruz
>>> stiversb at ucsc.edu
>>> v) 831-459-2472
>>> f) 831-459-2914
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
> ---
> Bill Stivers
> IC Unix Lab and Systems Administrator
> University of California at Santa Cruz
> stiversb at ucsc.edu
> v) 831-459-2472
> f) 831-459-2914
>
>
>