OS Installation

Base OS installation

Our platform is built on top of ​Ubuntu 12.04.04. The installation iso used was ​ubuntu-12.04.4-server-amd64.iso. The following settings were applied during the installation process:

1. Choose relevant language and keyboard settings
2. We expect eth2 is the up-link interface (used to internet access and remote control) and should be interface chosen for installation. It is also expected that eth2 will be connect to a network that will assign it a dhcp address.
3. Specify a local USERNAME/PASSWORD combo. Please keep track of this information, it will be required for all setup procedures later on.
4. Specify Manual partitioning and partition the disk as follows:

Number	Type	Size	Flags	File System	Mount Point
1	Primary	20GB	Bootable	Ext4	/
2	Primary	20GB		Ext4	/home
3	Primary	116GB		Ext4	/export
4	Primary	4GB		Swap

5. Leave the http Proxy field empty
6. specify NO AUTOMATIC UPDATES. This is important as the auto-update process may break some orbit packages.
7. Choose opensssh server in the task selection menu. All other tasks will be installed as seprate packages and do not need to be specified here.
8. Answer Yes to installing grub on the local boot disk
9. Remove the media (and the drive if needed) and reboot.

Note:

• If no explicit instruction is given for a setting, it's safe to assume the default should work.
• This version of Ubuntu does not work well with USB flash disk installations, The best results are with a burned CD/DVD and a USB CD/DVD drive as a the boot medium,​refrenced here.

Configure Host Name

Edit the follow files:

• /etc/hosts - Single text string with the fqdn of the console machine
• /etc/hostname - Modify this file to properly resolve the hostname of the machine.

Configure Networking

For proper console operation, The console is expected to be connected to 4 Networks. Their respective names and purposes are:

• Data - For experiment traffic, Ideally this is in a separate switch plane to avoid mixing / clobbering control traffic
• CM - Low speed network for soft control of power and terminal output of each node
• Control - Management and control traffic to the Nodes. This network is used for imaging and is needs to be fast. Ideal on a non-blocking switch with good back plane throughput.
• Outside - External access for the console. Mostly for remote control and package updates.

To establish the proper address spaces, we put appropriate rules in the /etc/network/interfaces file. We assume the following mapping of interfaces to subnets:

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The CM network interface
auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
      address 10.1.0.254
      netmask 255.255.255.0
      broadcast 10.1.0.255

# The Control network interface
auto eth3
iface eth3 inet static
      address 10.10.0.254
      netmask 255.255.255.0
      broadcast 10.10.0.255

# The  Data network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
      address 10.20.0.254
      netmask 255.255.255.0
      broadcast 10.20.0.255

# The primary network interface
auto eth2
iface eth2 inet dhcp