Preparing your systems for installation

Follow these steps to plan and prepare for installation.

  • Make sure that you have a supported operating system and any prerequisites installed before you install LSF. Also note any known issues related to the operating system used with LSF.
  • Make sure that the installation file system on the file server host has enough disk space for all host types.
  • Make sure that the top level LSF installation directory (that is, the LSF_TOP directory, which is the same a the EGO_TOP directory) is accessible with the same path name from all hosts in the LSF cluster (for example, the /usr/share/lsf directory).
  • Make sure that the installation file system that contains the LSF_TOP directory (EGO_TOP) is writable by the user account that is running the lsfinstall script.
  • Create user accounts for LSF administrators (for example, create the lsfadmin user account).
  • Get the LSF entitlement file for the edition you are installing.

    The entitlement file is installed as <LSF_TOP>/conf/lsf.entitlement.

    You must download the entitlement file for the edition of the product you are running, and set the LSF_ENTITLEMENT_FILE parameter in the install.config file to the full path to the entitlement file you downloaded.

    If you are installing LSF Express Edition, you can later upgrade to LSF Standard Edition to take advantage of the additional functionality of LSF Standard Edition. Reinstall the cluster with the LSF Standard Edition entitlement file (lsf_std_entitlement.dat).

    You can also manually upgrade from LSF Express Edition to Standard Edition. Get the LSF Standard entitlement configuration file lsf_std_entitlement.dat or lsf_adv_entitlement.dat, copy it to <LSF_TOP>/conf/lsf.entitlement, and restart your cluster. The new entitlement configuration enables extra functionality, but you might need to change some of the default LSF Express Edition configuration parameters to use the LSF Standard Edition features.

    After LSF is installed and running, run the lsid command to see which edition of LSF is enabled.

  • Select the appropriate LSF installer package.
  • Get the LSF installer script package that you selected and extract it.
    • Linux x86_64 platforms:
      # zcat lsf<version>_lsfinstall_linux_x86_64.tar.Z | tar xvf -
    • Other platforms:
      # zcat lsf<version>_lsfinstall.tar.Z | tar xvf -
    • No JRE required:
      # zcat lsf<version>_no_jre_lsfinstall.tar.Z | tar xvf -
  • Get the LSF distribution packages for all host types you need and put them in the same directory as the extracted LSF installer script.

    For example, for Linux 2.6 kernel glibc version 2.3, the distribution package is lsf<version>_linux2.6-glibc2.3-x86_64.tar.Z.

    Do not extract the distribution packages.

  • If you are installing LSF on MacOS, obtain the JRE from the Apple support website or through software update and install the JRE on the MacOS host first. You can also set the $JAVA_HOME environment variable to point to the JRE installation directory. The LSF installation program will search for the JRE in $JAVA_HOME. If $JAVA_HOME is not set or LSF cannot find the JRE in $JAVA_HOME, LSF searches for the JRE in $PATH.

Integrating LDAP with LSF

To install LSF in an LDAP environment, check that the following are satisfied:

  • The LSF administrator is a defined user in LDAP.
  • The OS is configured to use LDAP for authentication.
  • The LDAP administrator grants privileges to the LSF installer user (usually root) to retrieve the user list from the LDAP server.