Linux support in Zeuthen is based on Scientific Linux, an effort kindly made available by FNAL with contributions from other labs.
SL is in use at virtually all HEP sites and many other labs, universities, and enterprises.
Information for Linux Users
Using the Myrinet and Infiniband compute clusters
Status of SL Releases
Scientific Linux 6
SL6 is expected to become available around February 2011. Work on integration in our environment has started, using the RHEL6 public beta released in April 2010 and the beta2 refresh released in July. Progress will be documented on the SL6 Development page.
Scientific Linux 5
SL5 is our current workhorse (since Summer 2007) and will be the focus of linux support for a while, certainly for all of 2010, though SL6 may become available this year.
New hardware can be expected to work with SL5 until the end of 2011, but workstation support is currently already limited. Supporting existing systems will be possible until April 2014.
Scientific Linux 4
SL4 is only used on a few servers now. There are no more desktop systems. It's already old and its successor has been available for years. A few SL4 systems are still provided for the LHC activities and as reference systems for other users, but this is going to end soon. Add-ons will be kept to a minimum.
New server hardware is no longer supported properly, or not at all.
Existing systems could be kept alive until February 2012, if required and sensible, under a model similar to the one described for SL3 below. However, it is currently foreseen to phase out SL4 by the end of 2010.
Scientific Linux 3
SL3 was our workhorse from early 2005 to Summer 2007. It no longer works on any current hardware. There are no more SL3 desktops, no more servers, and only a very few special purpose systems used by a single project.
Full upstream support ended November 2007. On December 1st, it transisitioned to "Legacy support". See this copy of the announcement.
Within these limitations, existing SL3 systems were supported until October 2010, the end of life date of RHEL3.
Local Repositories and Mirrors
We mirror the current SL3, SL4, and SL5 releases: Local_Linux_Repositories
Network installations (http) are also possible from these repositories, using the small boot.iso CD images found in the images/ subdirectory of the distribution.
Full iso images are usually available in /project/linux/iso.