Patchless Client

Patchless Client

As of Lustre 1.6.0, Lustre supports running the client modules on most modern "stock" kernels without the need for patches to the client kernel. Patches are still required to the Lustre server kernel, but since these nodes generally only run Lustre this is not a major limitation.

We will typically post a "patchless" RPM at the download site and we strongly recommend that these pre-built RPMs are used instead of building your own.

However, if you have to run a kernel on the client that is not one of the supplied kernels, then it is possible to build from source for a wide variety of kernels as listed at the top the lustre/ChangeLog file for that release. The Lustre configure script will automatically detect the unpatched kernel and disable building the servers.

[lustre]$ ./configure --with-linux=/unpatched/kernel/source

Versions

Currently, the patchless client works with these kernel versions

Vanilla kernel:

• 2.6.15 (1.6.0)
• 2.6.16 (1.6.0)
• 2.6.17 (1.6.0) Mandriva's 2.6.17 is also reported working.
• 2.6.18 (1.6.0) Debian 4.0 2.6.18 is also reported working
• 2.6.19 (1.6.0)
• 2.6.20 (1.6.1 bug 11647)
• 2.6.21 (1.6.1 bug 11647)
• 2.6.22 (1.6.1 bug 12764)
• 2.6.23+ (tbd bug 14250)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux:

• RHEL4 [2.6.9-42.0.8EL] (1.6.0) with the following caveats:

 - Nested Symlinks: due to improper lookup_continue logic with unpatched 2.6.15
   kernels and earlier, nested symlinks will lead to unpredictable results
 - FMODE_EXEC missing: Lustre will incorrectly allow a user from one client to
   write/truncate a binary simultaneously while a user from a different client
   executes the same binary 

• RHEL4U5 [2.6.9-55EL] (1.6.0) Red Hat has included a number of fixes that allow Lustre to run with RHEL4U5 which resolves the above issues.
• RHEL5 [2.6.18-67.0.22] (1.6.1 bug 11647)

Fedora Core:

• FC6 [2.6.18] (1.6.1 bug 11647)

Suse:

• SLES 10 [2.6.16-60.0-31] (1.6.4 bug 12411))

Known Issues

many NFS-related bugs are also addressed by the patchless client fixes.