REMINDER: Pacman End of Life

Dear OSG Site Admins,

As we previously announced, the OSG has reached a point where 70% 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.