Building a Lustre Patchless Client

One common need within Lustre environments is the requirement to build Lustre clients using standard Linux kernels. Lustre servers commonly have a custom kernel with specific patches to optimize performance, but clients do not always require these kernel patches.

These directions will enable you to build the RPMs necessary to install the Lustre client bits on a system with a standard Redhat kernel.

1) Umount all Lustre clients and comment entries from /etc/fstab

2) Reboot a node into the standard redhat kernel you would like to build the client for. Assumption for these directions is RHEL 2.6.18-92.1.13 x86_64.

3) Install the full kernel source tree for the running kernel
- cd ~
- yum install rpm-build redhat-rpm-config unifdef
- mkdir -p rpmbuild/{BUILD,RPMS,SOURCES,SPECS,SRPMS}
- rpm -i http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/updates/SRPMS/kernel-2.6.18-92.1.13.el5.src.rpm

4) Unzip the lustre bits
- Download from http://www.sun.com/software/products/lustre/get.jsp
- mv lustre-1.6.6.tar.gz /usr/src
- gunzip lustre-1.6.6.tar.gz
- tar -xvf lustre-1.6.6.tar

5) Prep the kernel tree for building Lustre
- cd /usr/src/linux
- cp /boot/config-'uname -r' .config
- make oldconfig || make menuconfig
- make include/asm
- make include/linux/version.h
- make SUBDIRS=scripts

6) Configure the build - configure will detect an unpatched kernel and only build the client
- cd lustre
- ./configure --with-linux=/usr/src/linux

7) Create RPMs
- make rpms

8) You should get a set of Lustre RPMs in the build directory.
- ls ~/rpmbuild/RPMS

9) rpm -e lustre*

10) Install new client bits
- rpm -ivh lustre-client-1.6.6-2.6.18_92.1.1.13.el5.x86_64.rpm
- rpm -ivh lustre-modules-1.6.6-2.6.18_92.1.1.13.el5.x86_64.rpm

11) Remount all Lustre mounts
- vi /etc/fstab
uncomment lustre lines
- mount -a