Lustre with Virtualbox install

Introduction

This page provides an up to date installation guide for Lustre, using VirtualBox and Rocky Linux.

Building Lustre with LDISKFS (as of 2024-05-20)

The following guide uses VirtualBox 7.0, Rocky Linux 8.9 and Lustre 2.15.63 on a 64-bit operating system.

Setting up VirtualBox

Previous knowledge of VirtualBox is helpful, but not required for this tutorial. As previously stated we will be using VirtualBox 7.0 and Rocky Linux 8.9. We recommend the following minimum hardware settings for the VM:

• 4-8gb ram
• 4 cpu cores
• 30gb hard drive space

After installing the Rocky Linux ISO we will change the network settings on virtual box to enable SSH forwarding. In VirtualBox go to settings -> network and make sure it is attached to NAT. Then click on Port Forwarding and add a new rule called "SSH forwarding". The protocol should be TCP, and for this tutorial we will set the host port to 1122 but can be set to anything. Set the guest port to 22 and leave the Host IP/Guest IP empty.

Setting up Rocky Linux

By default Rocky Linux does not have it's internet connection enabled. If you have installed the GUI version of Rocky simply go to settings and enable the connection. Also go to the advanced settings and check off "enable by default" to avoid having to do this step after every reboot. However if you are using the minimal install ISO the quickest way to get it up and running is to use the

sudo nmuti

command. Enable the wired connection. Edit the connection afterwards to enable the automatically connect option as well. While in the nmtui menu we will also set the hostname to "Lustre-Server" for clarity. After you have set the hostname reboot the VM and we are now ready to begin install Lustre.

Installing Lustre (Client and Server)

Installing dependencies

To build lustre, the specific packages and dependences must be downloaded on the build server. Use the following commands to install the pre-requisit software tools required for lustre.

sudo dnf install git libtool flex bison wget quilt.noarch
sudo dnf --enablerepo=devel install libmount-devel libyaml-devel libnl3-devel e2fsprogs-devel

Use the following command to install kernel packages required for LDISKFS using dnf. It is important to have the entire set of packages from the same version (currently using v4.18.0).

sudo dnf install https://build.whamcloud.com/job/lustre-master/arch=x86_64,build_type=server,\
distro=el8.9,ib_stack=inkernel/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/artifacts/RPMS/x86_64/kernel-4.18.0-513.18.1.el8_lustre.x86_64.rpm \
https://build.whamcloud.com/job/lustre-master/arch=x86_64,build_type=server,\
distro=el8.9,ib_stack=inkernel/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/artifacts/RPMS/x86_64/kernel-core-4.18.0-513.18.1.el8_lustre.x86_64.rpm \
https://build.whamcloud.com/job/lustre-master/arch=x86_64,build_type=server,\
distro=el8.9,ib_stack=inkernel/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/artifacts/RPMS/x86_64/kernel-debuginfo-4.18.0-513.18.1.el8_lustre.x86_64.rpm \
https://build.whamcloud.com/job/lustre-master/arch=x86_64,build_type=server,\
distro=el8.9,ib_stack=inkernel/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/artifacts/RPMS/x86_64/kernel-debuginfo-common-x86_64-4.18.0-513.18.1.el8_lustre.x86_64.rpm \
https://build.whamcloud.com/job/lustre-master/arch=x86_64,build_type=server,\
distro=el8.9,ib_stack=inkernel/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/artifacts/RPMS/x86_64/kernel-devel-4.18.0-513.18.1.el8_lustre.x86_64.rpm \
https://build.whamcloud.com/job/lustre-master/arch=x86_64,build_type=server,\
distro=el8.9,ib_stack=inkernel/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/artifacts/RPMS/x86_64/kernel-headers-4.18.0-513.18.1.el8_lustre.x86_64.rpm \
https://build.whamcloud.com/job/lustre-master/arch=x86_64,build_type=server,\
distro=el8.9,ib_stack=inkernel/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/artifacts/RPMS/x86_64/kernel-modules-4.18.0-513.18.1.el8_lustre.x86_64.rpm \
https://build.whamcloud.com/job/lustre-master/arch=x86_64,build_type=server,\
distro=el8.9,ib_stack=inkernel/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/artifacts/RPMS/x86_64/kernel-modules-internal-4.18.0-513.18.1.el8_lustre.x86_64.rpm \

The last change we need to make is to patch the e2fsprogs to the Lustre version. This can be done by editing the 'dnf.conf' file vi /etc/dnf/dnf.conf and adding

[Lustre-e2fsprogs]
name=Lustre-e2fsprogs
baseurl=http://downloads.whamcloud.com/public/e2fsprogs/latest/el$releasever/
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1

After saving the changes to the dnf.conf file we can apply the patch.

sudo dnf update e2fsprogs

Everything should now be installed, we can now compile Lustre

Compiling and Building Lustre

To obtain the Lustre source use the following commands:

mkdir /usr/src/lustre-head
cd /usr/src/lustre-head
git clone git://git.whamcloud.com/fs/lustre-release.git lustre-head

This will have cloned the repository into the directory 'lustre-head'. Before comencing the build process, first assure that the current directory is 'lustre-head' or the location where the repository has been cloned (if "lustre-head" is excluded from the git clone command, the repository will be named lustre-release).

Run the following commands to build lustre:

sh autogen.sh
./configure
sudo make
sudo make install

The make process might take a while, this is normal. Reboot the VM one last time after 'make install' completes. After the reboot Lustre has been successfully installed.

Testing and Build confirmation

To ensure that what we have done was successful we can go into the tests folder and run the llmount.sh script to mount the LDISKFS

cd /Lustre/lustre-release/lustre/tests
sudo ./llmount.sh

After running this script we should be able to see them mounted in /mnt

cd /mnt
ls

If you can see "lustre lustre-mds1 lustre-ost1 lustre-ost2" everything has been built properly. If you would like to run the other tests that are included with Lustre we need to add a dummy user.

groupadd -g 500 group500
useradd -u 500 -g 500 runas

You can now also run all of the tests that are included in the lustre/tests folder.