[Planetlab-announce] Planetlab 4.0 Node Upgrade

[Faiyaz Ahmed]

ATTN PlanetLab Users, Technical Contacts, and PIs,

The PlanetLab 4.0 Node software has stabilized and is now ready for roll 
out.  Over the next few weeks, nodes will be taken down and reinstalled 
with the new node software.  The reinstall will clean all slice 
filesystems, so any code/data you have on the node will be lost. Do not 
leave valuable data in your slice.

Users can verify which nodes have been upgrading by looking at 
/etc/redhat-release;  upgraded nodes will say "Fedora Core release 4 
(Stentz)" and legacy nodes not yet upgraded will say "Fedora Core 
release 2 (Tettnang)".

After a successful upgrade, slices will be re-instanciated and useable 
in, at most, 24 hours.

As this is a massive undertaking, the following will help us keep the 
rollout smooth and productive:

- Please make sure your site nodes meet the minimum hardware 
requirements (http://www.planet-lab.org/doc/guides/tech Section 2.1.1)

- Please make sure they are up, functioning properly, and accessible 
(respond to ping, available for ssh, etc)

- Verify that the network information for each node at your site on the 
PL website is accurate and up to date.

- Please make sure all nodes at your site are using the most recent PL 
BootCD (currently version 3.3).  I've noticed quite a few sites are 
still using 2.x BootCDs.  Old BootCDs are having issues bootstrapping 
upgraded nodes and should be replaced ASAP.  BootCDs can be downloaded 
from our repository:
http://www.planet-lab.org/download/PlanetLab-BootCD-3.3.iso for CDs and 
http://www.planet-lab.org/download/PlanetLab-BootCD-3.3.usb for USB Keys.

- Also, please make sure that your email address is up to date on the PL 
website.  We've begun disabling accounts when our attempts to contact 
the user result in a bounce.


Sincerely,
PlanetLab Operations