Tuesday, February 26, 2013

OSG Software plans for migration from Java 6

OSG community:

The OSG Software team is requesting feedback on its plan to migrate packages from Oracle JDK 6 to OpenJDK 7. Some background is copied below, and then all supporting documents are on the OSG TWiki.

You may wonder about timelines and effort for the project. We are working on that, but there is much that we do not know yet. Nonetheless, this project is a top priority. The goal is to have a clearer picture of the effort required by the All Hands Meeting. So far, we have made solid progress on rebuilding Java components and are about to embark on the first significant round of testing.

BACKGROUND: Many packages in the OSG Software stack are based on Java. To date in OSG 3.x, we have distributed the Oracle JDK 6 implementation of Java, and built and distributed Java packages using it. At the end of February, 2013, Oracle will discontinue public support of the Java 6 series, including any further security or bug fixes. Due to the frequent discovery of security flaws in Java, we must migrate away from Oracle JDK 6 to a supported Java implementation. We intend to update OSG Software 3.1.x with new Java packages, based on a new implementation, as quickly as possible to reduce our exposure to security risks in Java. The page that is linked below describes our plan to do so at a high level and is intended for site administrators and other stakeholders who are interested in the change.

For more information, please see:

https://www.opensciencegrid.org/bin/view/Documentation/Release3/Java6Migration_draft

We welcome feedback on this plan at goc@opensciencegrid.org or osg-software@opensciencegrid.org

Brief BDII Outage

At 14:25 UTC (9:25 eastern time) during scheduled maintenance, the BDII service experienced a brief outage due to incorrect scheduling of the maintenance process. Full service was restored at 14:32 (9:32 eastern)

The GOC apologizes for any inconvenience and has taken steps to insure this will not recur.

Monday, February 25, 2013

OSG All Hands Meeting - Please Register Today!

We are less than two weeks away from the start of the 2013 OSG All Hands Meeting!  We would kindly request that if you plan to attend and have not registered you register as soon as possible so that we can get a proper count for meals and activities.  You can find registration information at: http://pti.iu.edu/osgahm-2013/registration.  Registration will allow your hosts to provide a comfortable, timely, and overall enjoyable experience at this years OSG All Hands Meeting.

The OSG Operations Center and Indiana University will be hosting the annual OSG All Hands Meeting on the week of March 11th on the downtown Indianapolis campus of IUPUI. Indiana University has been a long term core partner of the OSG and has provided operational infrastructure and support services since the inception of the project.

The scheduled topics include:
* Monday, March 11th: US ATLAS and CMS Tier 2/Tier 3 Facilities Meeting; Interoperations with EGI and WLCG
* Tuesday, March 12th: Campus Infrastructures Community Workshop
* Wednesday, March 13th: State of the OSG; Scienctific Highlights; Technology Discussion
* Thursday, March 14th: Technology Discussions and User/Admin Hands-On Sessions; Meetings will conclude at approximately lunchtime.
* OSG Council Meeting: Thursday afternoon and Friday morning

A detailed schedule is under constructions at https://indico.fnal.gov/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=5610

Please visit the 2013 OSG AHM site at http://pti.iu.edu/osgahm-2013 for information, details, and registration.

Lothar Bauerdick, OSG Executive Director
Bill Barnett, IU Research Technologies Director of Science Community Tools
Fred Luehring, IU HEP Research Scientist
Therese Miller, Manager of Collaboration and Engagement for Research Technologies
Rob Quick, OSG Operations Area Coordinator

OSG yum repository change for disruptive upgrades

Sometimes, the OSG Software team upgrades software to new versions that could disrupt production sites. At very least, such changes could require site downtime and manual intervention before returning to service. On one hand, we want to avoid sites upgrading to disruptive versions by accident. But for adventuresome sites that want or need to upgrade, we want to offer easy access to the new packages along with the same assurance of quality as for other production releases.

Other software distributions typically reserve disruptive upgrades for completely new and distinct releases, such as Fedora 16 vs. Fedora 17. But for OSG, starting a new release series, such as 3.2 or 4.0, is itself more disruptive than is justified by the few packages that currently need this special attention. Certainly, OSG will start a new software series eventually, but for now, we plan to complement the existing OSG 3.1 series with an "Upcoming" repository: a separate, production-ready repository just for disruptive upgrades.

Technically, there will be many Upcoming repositories; most are for development and testing, but two are for use by production sites:

el5-osg-upcoming-release
el6-osg-upcoming-release

All repositories will be included in the osg-release RPM (which defines our repositories to yum), and all of them will be disabled by default. Thus, each one can be enabled independently and temporarily or permanently as desired. Because each Upcoming repository contains ONLY new, disruptive updates, it must be used together with a standard OSG 3.1 repository (e.g., el5-osg-release) to get a full software stack. The OSG Software team will ensure that Upcoming packages integrate with standard ones.

In most cases, Upcoming packages will form the nucleus of the next OSG release series (e.g., OSG 3.2 or 4.0). However, in some cases and after ample testing by some production sites, we will migrate Upcoming packages back into the standard release. For instance, this is our plan for migrating packages from Java 6 to Java 7.

We plan to have the Upcoming repositories in place and ready for production use (albeit with no released packages at first) in our next release, scheduled for Tuesday, 5 March 2013.

We welcome feedback on this plan at or .

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

GOC Service Update - Tuesday, February 26th, 2013

The GOC will upgrade the following services beginning Tuesday, February 26th, 2013 at 14:00 UTC. The GOC reserves 8 hours (14:00 - 22:00 UTC) in the unlikely event that unexpected problems are encountered. We encourage users to test affected services before the production release.
Gratiaweb


Installing bdii_probe which will read data from OSG BDII, and post data to FNAL gratia DB/collector. GratiaWeb will then access that DB to pull data for various graphs.
Updating osg-measurements-metrics-db/web to version 1.1-5 per Ashu Guru’s request.
Installing new GOC soft-backup script
OSG Web (web.grid.iu.edu)


Setting up web-itb.grid.iu.edu on 2/19. Installing new wordpress instance for new OSG homepage project.
OIM 3.13


Installing user/host certificate expiration notifier. Resetting cert_expiration dates for all host certificate requests previously requested.
GOC Ticket 1.61


Updating configuration structure used by Apache Solr indexer (used by ticket search).
Added various checks for missing parameters on REST interface.
Adding deprecation notice for /storage and /itb
Installing new GOC soft-backup script
MyOSG 2.7


Updated layout for search result page.
Updated resource group / status history page to use user’s browser local timezone in order to correct inconsistent timezone display [part of OIM-46]
All Services

There will be OS updates; reboots will be required. Downtime should be minimal, and the usual high-availability mechanisms will be used to reduce service downtime even further and eliminate it in most cases. However, services may experience degraded performance, and the services without HA mechanisms (OIM and Twiki) will still experience brief downtimes.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Pacman End of Life

Dear OSG Site Admins,

As we previously announced, the OSG has reached a point where two thirds of all resources have updated to the new RPM based packaging of the OSG software stack. Thank you to everyone that contributed to make this a successful transition. As you know from previous emails, Pacman soon will no longer be supported.

The End of Life (EOL) date for Pacman is May 31, 2013. An important driver for this date is that the OSG will be transitioning to SHA2 based certificates in mid August and these will cause a number of compatibility issues with Pacman software; there are no plans to retrofit OSG 1.2 (the Pacman distribution) with SHA2 capabilities.

If you have concerns, we need to hear from you. We are aware of the need for a non-root worker node installation option required at some resources. The OSG Software Team is working hard to make sure this option is available well before the EOL date. If there are other issues that might prevent you from upgrading before the EOL date, please let us know so that we can help you make a smooth transition.

Thank you,
The Production Team: Dan Fraser, Marco Mambelli, and Rob Quick.

OSG All Hands Meeting - Please Register Today!

We are less than a month away from the 2013 OSG All Hands Meeting!  We would request that you please register as soon as possible so that we can get a proper count for meals and activities.  Additionally, the special rate for the hotel has been extended to February 16th, but you will need to call the hotel at 1-317-822-9029 instead of using the block code published at the AHM web site. Online booking will not honor this pricing.

The OSG Operations Center and Indiana University will be hosting the annual OSG All Hands Meeting on the week of March 11th on the downtown Indianapolis campus of IUPUI. Indiana University has been a long term core partner of the OSG and has provided operational infrastructure and support services since the inception of the project.

The scheduled topics include:
* Monday, March 11th: US ATLAS and CMS Tier 2/Tier 3 Facilities Meeting; Interoperations with EGI and WLCG
* Tuesday, March 12th: Campus Infrastructures Community Workshop
* Wednesday, March 13th: State of the OSG; Scienctific Highlights; Technology Discussion
* Thursday, March 14th: Technology Discussions and User/Admin Hands-On Sessions; Meetings will conclude at approximately lunchtime.
* OSG Council Meeting: Thursday afternoon and Friday morning

A detailed schedule is under constructions at https://indico.fnal.gov/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=5610

Please visit the 2013 OSG AHM site at http://pti.iu.edu/osgahm-2013 for information, details, and registration.

Lothar Bauerdick, OSG Executive Director
Bill Barnett, IU Research Technologies Director of Science Community Tools
Fred Luehring, IU HEP Research Scientist
Therese Miller, Manager of Collaboration and Engagement for Research Technologies
Rob Quick, OSG Operations Area Coordinator

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Announcing OSG 3.1.14 release

We are pleased to announce OSG Software version 3.1.14!
This is the new OSG Software distributed via RPMs for:

* Scientific Linux 5 and 6
* CentOS 5 and 6
* Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6

This release affects all OSG installations using CA certificates and Hadoop SEs . Changes include:

* Updated CA certs packages
* Updated hadoop packages
* Addition of frontier-squid

Release notes and pointers to more documentation can be found at:

https://www.opensciencegrid.org/bin/view/Documentation/Release3/Release3114

Need help? Let us know:

https://www.opensciencegrid.org/bin/view/Documentation/Release3/HelpProcedure

We welcome feedback on this release!

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

OSG All Hands Meeting - Final Days to Get Special Lodging Rates

We are less than 5 weeks away from the OSG All Hands Meeting! The deadline for reserving rooms at the negotiated conference rate is February 9th. This hard deadline is fast approaching. If you want to obtain a room at the special rate, you must book by this coming Saturday! Details for accommodations can be found at http://pti.iu.edu/osgahm-2013/hotel_transportation. If you plan on attending please register and make your lodging arrangements soon.

The OSG Operations Center and Indiana University will be hosting the annual OSG All Hands Meeting on the week of March 11th on the downtown Indianapolis campus of IUPUI. Indiana University has been a long term core partner of the OSG and has provided operational infrastructure and support services since the inception of the project.

The scheduled topics include:
* Monday, March 11th: US ATLAS and CMS Tier 2/Tier 3 Facilities Meeting; Interoperations with EGI and WLCG
* Tuesday, March 12th: Campus Infrastructures Community Workshop
* Wednesday, March 13th: State of the OSG; Scienctific Highlights; Technology Discussion
* Thursday, March 14th: Technology Discussions and User/Admin Hands-On Sessions; Meetings will conclude at approximately lunchtime.
* OSG Council Meeting: Thursday afternoon and Friday morning

A detailed schedule is under constructions at https://indico.fnal.gov/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=5610

Please visit the 2013 OSG AHM site at http://pti.iu.edu/osgahm-2013 for information, details, and registration.

Lothar Bauerdick, OSG Executive Director
Bill Barnett, IU Research Technologies Director of Science Community Tools
Fred Luehring, IU HEP Research Scientist
Therese Miller, Manager of Collaboration and Engagement for Research Technologies
Rob Quick, OSG Operations Area Coordinator

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

GOC Service Update Tuesday, February 12th at 14:00 UTC

The GOC will upgrade the following services beginning Tuesday, February 12th, 2012 at 14:00 UTC. The GOC reserves 8 hours (14:00 - 22:00 UTC) in the unlikely event that unexpected problems are encountered. We encourage users to test affected services before the production release.


OIM 3.12
Increased maximum gridadmin count from 10 to 30 as requested by Alain Deximo.
Stopped assigning Alain Deximo to secondary RA on all new VO.
Fixed the home icon issue on certificate page
Added setter for SUPPORTING_SC_NAME ticket metadata on resource and vo registration notification
Updated help link label based on Von's suggestion [OSGPKI-306]
Assign GOC infrastructure member in case of certificate issue failure. [OSGPKI-254]
Updated host certificate CSR help content and hidden under a help link.
PKI Rest API / Updated exception detail to reflect the error condition more accurately.
PKI Rest API / Reformatted user certificate request ticket title to be more consistent with other tickets.
PKI Rest API / Added request_comment support for various APIs.
PKI / Removed RENEW_REQUESTED state and transitions which are no longer necessary.
PKI Host Certificate / Removed renew/request-renew methods from host cert model
PKI User Certificate / Implemented renew method
PKI User Certificate GUI / Made "Generating CSR" indicator to display only when it actually needs generate CSR.
PKI User Certificate GUI / Added last approved time indicator
PKI REST API / removed host_certs_renew and implemented user_cert_renew user_cert_retrieve/user_cert_approve user_cert_reject user_cert_cancel user_cert_revoke user_cert_issue APIs (no user_cert_request)
(released) Updated certificate redirector (/certificate) into a normal page, and made it editable by admin and admin_ra(to allow osg pki staff to edit)
Event (AMQP)


Postponed from 1/22 update due to VM infrastructure issue.
Upgrading to RHEL6/RabbitMQ 3.0.1
Clustering with event1/2.grid.iu.edu


OSG Jira
Upgrade to version 5.2.5 (See what’s new with Jira 5.2 https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/JIRA+5.2+Release+Notes)
Changing status order as per software group request


MyOSG 2.6
Removed unused/deprecated code from BDII information browser page.
Modified rgdowntime to look for disabled DNs in order to show DN information on old downtimes with already disabled DNs.


Ticket 1.60
Updating to pecl amqp-1.0.9 for event publishing.
Allowing GOC staff to edit metadata (R/RG/VO/SC) [TICKET-11]
Updated metadata displayed for guest users.
Fixed inconsistencies on successful ticket create/update messages.
Added capability to reset assignee via REST/update [for OSGPKI-254]


Installed Capacity Report
Upgrading to version 1.0-13 [GOC Ticket 13345] (http://koji-hub.batlab.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=3007)

OSG All Hands Meeting Poster Sessions

OSG AHM Poster Sessions on March 12-13

Poster sessions will be held during the OSG All Hands Meeting lunch breaks on
Tuesday March 12 and Wednesday March 13. Any OSG-related poster is welcome, as
are posters on any related subject. Suggested topics include OSG services and
projects, descriptions of doing research using the OSG, campus grids, and
grid/cloud/virtualization topics. Feel free to rework or reshow posters
previously shown. The setting will be informal with lots of discussion
expected and the sessions will commence at 1:00 pm to allow the presenters to
have time to eat. We prefer to have advance notice of posters so that we can
have a sufficient space available. However we will try to accommodate last
minute submissions. Please contact Fred Luehring (luehring at indiana dot edu)
or Scott Teige (steige at indiana dot edu) for information.