Updating Scyld ClusterWare

Important

A simple yum update will not update Scyld ClusterWare packages, as the scyld-install tool has disabled /etc/yum.repos.d/clusterware.repo in order to prevent yum update from inadvertently updating Scyld ClusterWare. Instead, Penguin Computing strongly recommends using the scyld-install tool to perform updates of the basic Scyld ClusterWare packages that were originally installed by scyld-install, and then using yum update --enablerepo=scyld* <PACKAGES> to update (perhaps selectively) the optional Scyld ClusterWare packages that an administrator previously installed using yum install --enablerepo=scyld* <PACKAGES>, as described in Installing Optional ClusterWare Software.

From time to time, Scyld may release updates and add-ons to Scyld ClusterWare. Customers on active support plans for Scyld software products can access these updates on the Penguin Computing website. Visit https://www.penguincomputing.com/support for details. This site offers answers to common technical questions and provides access to application notes, software updates, and product documentation.

The Release Notes contains brief notes about the latest release, and the Changelog provides a history of significant changes for each software release and a list of Known Issues And Workarounds.

The scyld-install tool is used to update Scyld ClusterWare software, just as it was used to perform the initial installation. This tool first determines if a newer clusterware-installer package is available, and if so will update clusterware-installer and then restart scyld-install.

Important

scyld-install uses the yum command to access Scyld ClusterWare and potentially various other repositories (e.g., Red Hat RHEL or CentOS) that by default normally reside on Internet websites. However, if the head node(s) do not have Internet access, then the required repositories must reside on local storage that is accessible by the head node(s). See Appendix: Creating Local Repositories without Internet.

Note

Executing scyld-install with no arguments presupposes that ClusterWare is not yet installed. If ClusterWare is currently installed, then the tool asks for positive confirmation that the user does intend to update existing software. You can avoid this interaction by instead executing scyld-install with -u or --update. That same degree of caution occurs if executing scyld-install --update on a server that does not have ClusterWare already installed: the tool asks for positive confirmation that the user does intend to install ClusterWare as a fresh install.

The scyld-install tool only updates basic ClusterWare software that was previously installed by the tool, plus any other dependency packages. After ClusterWare is updated, you can execute yum check-update --enablerepo=scyld* | grep scyld to view the optional ClusterWare packages that were previously installed using yum install --enablerepo=scyld*, and then use sudo yum update --enablerepo=scyld* <PACKAGES> to update (or not) as appropriate for your local head node.

You can also execute yum check-update to view the non-ClusterWare installed packages that have available updates, and then use sudo yum update <PACKAGES> to selectively update (or not) as appropriate for your local head node.

Alternatively, scyld-install --clear empties the database and clears the current installation. Just like during an initial installation, after a --clear the database should be primed with a cluster configuration. The cluster configuration can be loaded at the same time as the --clear using the --config /path/to/cluster-conf argument. This will use the scyld-cluster-conf tool to load the cluster configuration's initial declaration of private cluster interface, max number of nodes, starting IP address, and MAC address(es), as described in Execute the ClusterWare install script. For more details of the scyld-cluster-conf tool please refer to the Reference Guide.

Similar to using scyld-install to perform a fresh install on a non-Scyld head node, executing scyld-install --clear --config /path/to/cluster-conf> will invoke the scyld-add-boot-config script to create a new default boot image.