perfSONAR User Q&A and Other Discussion

[Jason Zurawski <>]

Greetings:

In the coming days we will announce the availability of the latest version of 
the perfSONAR Toolkit. We wanted to make the community aware of two important 
announcements related to version 3.3 of the software:

1) This is the initial notification that the scheduled the End of Life (EOL) 
for the pS Performance Toolkit v3.3 will be Friday April 10th, 2015.  All 
architectures of the pS Performance Toolkit v3.3 (i386, x86_64) are impacted, 
and the software will be removed from the active mirrors on that date.  For 
individuals who would like to have access to the historic RPMs, the project 
has created a "vault" containing last builds of project software from prior 
versions:

        http://software.internet2.edu/vault/

The Internet2 repository software (versions 0.4-2 and above for version 3.3 
users) contains directives to enable this feature.  The repository package 
can be found in these locations, or will be updated for existing installation 
via YUM:

        
http://software.internet2.edu/rpms/el6/i386/main/RPMS/Internet2-repo-0.4-2.noarch.rpm
        
http://software.internet2.edu/rpms/el6/x86_64/main/RPMS/Internet2-repo-0.4-2.noarch.rpm

Once enabled, the vault will allow existing toolkit builds to access the old 
RPMs. However, it will not allow someone to install a fresh instance from a 
netinstall ISO.  To enable this repo:

        a) Edit the "/etc/yum.repos.d/Internet2-Vault.repo" file and change 
"enabled = 0" to "enabled = 1" for both repositories listed in this file

        b) Run 'yum update' to update the cache of packages

The software for version 3.3 will be added as we get closer to the EOL date.  

2) The LiveCD/LiveUSB tool will no longer be available in the 3.4 release.  
The decision to EOL this product completely was based on a number of factors:

        - A recent perfSONAR review showed that ~2% of the current of 
deployed instances are LiveCD

        - A user survey showed that many institutions prefer to integrate 
their perfSONAR node into active configuration management systems to manage 
patching

        - Recent vulnerabilities, such as shellshock, can impact static 
software instances more so than a version that is able to be updated

        - By eliminating the LiveCD/LiveUSB, we can focus on improving the 
existing products and exploring other areas of interest emphasized by the 
community

The perfSONAR project will continue to support the 3.3.x LiveCD/LiveUSB for 
an additional 6 months (until April 10th 2015), and then will cease offering 
builds.  During this period of time we will be generating new products when a 
serious vulnerability is found (similar to how we have done with shellshock 
and heartbleed), or when a critical kernel vulnerability is announced.  We 
will continue to announce the availability of new builds via the user and 
announce lists when they are available.  Institutions that are using the Live 
products currently are encouraged to upgrade when 3.4 becomes available.  
 
Thanks, and please relay any questions about these announcements to the 
perfSONAR Development team: 


The perfSONAR Toolkit Development Team