Installing Cygwin

Cygwin is a POSIX environment available for Windows and can be downloaded from the Cygwin website (www.cygwin.com). GPFS uses this component to support many of its administrative scripts. System administrators have the option of using either the GPFS Admin Command Prompt or GPFS Admin Korn Shell to run GPFS commands.

Cygwin must be installed before installing GPFS. It is a software package that provides a Unix-like environment on Windows and provides runtime support for POSIX applications and includes programs such as grep, ksh, ls, and ps.

When running Cygwin setup, only the standard packages are installed by default. GPFS requires installation of additional packages, which are listed in Installing the 64-bit version of Cygwin.

Note: Starting with GPFS 4.1.1, the 32-bit version of Cygwin is no longer supported for Windows nodes running GPFS. Users that are running GPFS 4.1 with the 32-bit version of Cygwin installed must upgrade to the 64-bit version of Cygwin before installing GPFS 4.1.1. For more information, see Upgrading from the 32-bit version of Cygwin to the 64-bit version of Cygwin. For users on GPFS releases prior to 4.1 (SUA based), see Offline upgrade with complete cluster shutdown.

Upgrading from the 32-bit version of Cygwin to the 64-bit version of Cygwin

Follow these instructions to upgrade from the 32-bit version of Cygwin to the 64-bit version of Cygwin:

  1. Uninstall GPFS 4.1 and reboot.
  2. Uninstall IBM® GSKit for GPFS and reboot.
  3. Uninstall the GPFS 4.1 license.
  4. Stop and delete any Cygwin 32-bit services, such as OpenSSH, that might have been configured.
  5. Do not uninstall the 32-bit version of Cygwin yet, or you may lose GPFS configuration information.
  6. Install the 64-bit version of Cygwin using the instructions in Installing the 64-bit version of Cygwin.
  7. Install the GPFS 4.1.1 license for the appropriate edition; for example, gpfs.ext-4.1.1-Windows-license.msi.
  8. Install the appropriate GPFS 4.1.1 edition; for example, gpfs.ext-4.1.1.x-Windows.msi.
  9. Install IBM GSKit for GPFS.
  10. Uninstall the 32-bit version of Cygwin completely.
  11. Follow the procedures in Installing and configuring OpenSSH on Windows nodes.

Installing the 64-bit version of Cygwin

To install the 64-bit version of Cygwin for Windows, follow these steps:
  1. Logon to the Windows node as the account you will use for GPFS administrative operations.
  2. Go to the Cygwin website (www.cygwin.com), and click the Install Cygwin link in the upper-left pane.
  3. Download and start the installation of the setup-x86_64.exe file.
  4. Follow the prompts to continue with the install. The default settings are recommended until the Select Packages dialog is displayed. Then, select the following packages (use the Search field to quickly find these packages):
    • diffutils: A GNU collection of diff utilities
    • flip: Convert text file line endings between Unix and DOS formats
    • m4: GNU implementation of the traditional Unix macro processor
    • mksh: MirBSD Korn Shell
    • perl: Perl programming language interpreter
    • procps-ng: System and process monitoring utilities
    • openssh: The OpenSSH server and client programs (only required if you plan on mixing Linux®, AIX® and Windows nodes in the same cluster)
  5. Click the Next button, and continue to follow the prompts to complete the installation.
  6. If you are using a mixed cluster environment (Windows and Linux/AIX), follow the steps in Installing and configuring OpenSSH on Windows nodes.