perfSONAR User Q&A and Other Discussion

[Mark Foster <>]

Hi -

Given the recent messages about lack of NDT on the 4.0 release, it seems some folks on 
this list may not realize that NDT fundamentally requires features that are really only 
available in web100-based kernels. And web100 itself has long ago gone into a 
"stasis" regarding tracking the newest kernels.

Now several years old, the statement on
http://www.web100.org/
"Web100 is now several years beyond the end-of-funding. We are still updating the 
kernel patchs to track new Linux versions. A good portion of the user base and 
developers still monitor the discussion list. The only remaining support for the Web100 
project is via the discussion list."

None of this is at the direction (or fault) of the perfSONAR dev team.

For folks that really want something akin to NDT, Brian's and Andrew's 
suggestion to take a look at (and get involved in) M-Lab is probably one of 
the better places to spend energy. The alternative might be to embark on diy 
custom kernel with web100 extensions, based upon older kernel releases, then 
run a server that does (only) NDT and accept that going forward, this 
approach may miss various updates/fixes/improvements.

We've used NDT with considerable benefit in some cases over the last few 
years, and largely have done it via the diy approach (vs bundled in perfSONAR 
install). But we've also moved to using other ways of measuring and 
troubleshooting links.

I'd rather have the perfSONAR dev team focus on improvements as they have 
with the 4.0 release than continue to attempt to include elements that 
otherwise have marginal (or no) support by the kernel distros.

-- Mark
NASA Research & Engineering Network
NASA Ames Research Center

On 4/18/2017 9:01 AM, Andrew Lake wrote:
> Hi,
>
> NDT is no longer supported by the perfSONAR project as of perfSONAR 4.0. We 
> will continue build web100 kernels for CentOS 6 as we have until October 17, 
> 2017 (6 months after the release of 4.0).
>
>
> 4. The web100 patch does not support the kernel that ships with CentOS 7, 
> there is no way to get NDT on CentOS 7.
>
> 5. The perfSONAR team doesn’t have a developer that commits code to NDT and 
> hasn't for some time. We can't stop you from doing a “yum install ndt” but 
> don’t expect any updates from us. The NDT code lives on as part of M-LAB( 
> https://www.measurementlab.net) which is a completely separate project.
>
> Hope that helps,
> Andy