perfSONAR User Q&A and Other Discussion

[Andrew Lake <>]

All,

Most of you are probably aware of the Meltdown (https://meltdownattack.com) and Spectre (https://spectreattack.com/) vulnerabilities making the rounds today. Patches are available for the Linux kernel so it is recommended you work with your local sysadmins to determine the best time to upgrade your perfSONAR boxes. Even if you have auto-updates enabled, kernel updates require a reboot to apply so you should schedule a time to do so after the update installs. 

It is possible there may be performance impacts, so be aware of that as you update. We are doing our best to understand the impacts and will share more information as we find it - and encourage others in the community to do so as well if they notice anything significant after the updates.

This is also a reminder that since we no longer support the web100 kernel, there will not be a build. If you have intentionally held your system back on web100 then you should either update to non-web100 or try the steps at https://github.com/perfsonar/project/wiki/CentOS-Build-Instructions#kernel to build your own.

Thank you,

The perfSONAR Development Team