[net-perf] piPEs preferred linux distro?

[Michael Sinatra]

Mike Hunter wrote:
> On Jun 07, "John Haskins" wrote:
> 
> 
>>FreeBSD I got; I am glad to play the idiot wrt building a
>>linux box these days.
>>
>>In looking at the OS requirements for the workshop, I followed
>>this chain:
>>http://e2epi.internet2.edu/network-perf-wk/requirements.html
>>  'Latest kernel version that supports Web100'
>>http://www.web100.org/download/
>>  '2.5.3 for Linux 2.6.11, released March 3, 2005'
>>
>>Have folks got opinions to share as to the most compliant
>>linux distro that includes the 2.6.11 kernel?
> 
> 
> If you've got some time to devote to learning the install process, I'd
> suggest gentoo.  It's great for this purpose because it's extremely
> minimalist (not even cron comes out of the box!), source-based, and has good
> package management (it's often considered the FreeBSD of linux :) .)  Just 
> stick a kernel in /usr/src, patch it with web100, do some makes and you're 
> all set (the kernel itself lives outside of gentoo's "portage" package 
> management, which is a good thing for applying custom patches IMHO.)

Seconded.  Mike H. and I have set up several Gentoo systems here at UCB 
and it has worked very well.  For this kind of application, it's ideal 
because it's easy to make it run with variously tweaked kernels, and 
because everything is compliled from source, you can control all of the 
compiler flags and the like.  You don't need to worry about binary 
incompatibilities, etc.

What I do is follow the instructions at www.gentoo.org to install the 
base system, and then install the "vanilla-sources" package, specifying 
kernel 2.6.11.X (currently 2.6.11.10), patch it with web100, configure 
it using menuconfig, and compile and install.  I have also installed 
gentoo by hot-swapping a new disk in an empty bay of an existing system 
and doing all of the work from there, rather than booting from CD on the 
new system.  That works fine, except you need to be careful when 
configuring GRUB.

One trick when you do the web100 patch:

The latest vanilla linux kernel (using Gentoo's "vanilla-sources" 
package) is 2.6.11.10.  That causes issues with the web100 patch, which 
tries to add a -web100 suffix onto the version addendum variable in the 
Makefile.  Since there's already a .10 suffix, it chokes.  It's trivial 
to fix--just manually update the Makefile to add the -web100 suffix.  I 
just compiled and installed 2.6.11.10-web100 into a test system last 
night and it's working fine.

michael