perfSONAR User Q&A and Other Discussion

[Andrew Lake <>]

All,

 

The beta for the next version of perfSONAR has been out for over a week and we expect that a final release is a few weeks away. The perfSONAR team wants to remind you that when 4.2 is released, pScheduler will no longer support the backward compatibility with BWCTL as it has since 4.0. We’ve been phasing out BWCTL for over two years and this ends the process originally detailed here: http://docs.perfsonar.net/manage_update.html#bwctl-support. 

 

The link above also has instructions for checking if any of your tests still use BWCTL. Generally, this change will affect you if any of the following are true:

 

- You are still running perfSONAR 3.5.x or earlier. Independent of this change, we strongly recommend upgrading since we are years removed from the support window at this point. 

 

- Someone you test to is running 3.5.x, meaning they don’t have pScheduler but do have BWCTL.

 

- TCP port 443 is blocked on your host or a host to which you are testing since it is the primary pScheduler port. Up until the release of 4.2, pScheduler falls back to BWCTL for some tests when it can’t connect to port 443 on the far end.  (Note that it is possible to run pScheduler on an alternate port.)

The primary motivation for this change, beyond the fact the BWCTL itself is no longer supported, is the fact that the portion of the pScheduler software that makes the decision whether to use BWCTL has the potential to affect non-BWCTL tests. In particular it can make advanced (but increasingly common) binding scenarios much more difficult (or impossible). We know transition like this can be challenging. It should be noted that BWCTL will not be removed from your host if it is already installed, but upgrading to 4.2 will remove the features in pScheduler that allow for backward compatibility.

Please let us know if you have any questions and expect further reminders in 4.2-related emails as we set a date and draw nearer to the final release.

Thank you, 

The perfSONAR Development Team