Legacy OS Installation

This procedure details the installation of special binaries to provide legacy Operating System support for NC taskers.

A post-installation script is available to automate the creation of a "portable" architecture directory for linux64, named linux64p. This portable architecture contains required system libraries and modified binaries that point to them instead of relying on those on the host. The intent of this is to provide an architecture that will run on Red Hat 6 or equivalent.

The script, $VOVDIR/../scripts/install-portable-arch.sh, requires the patchelf utility to be installed on the host running it. The reference configuration is based upon RHEL 7.9 or equivalent, and thus, the script will generate and utilize a configuration file (portable-arch.cfg) in the CWD that contains paths to required system libraries specific to that distribution. The configuration file can be adjusted to reflect differences in library locations and/or versions, but note that significant differences in versions may result in the portable architecture being unusable.

The configuration file contains a full library path and an optional symlink name on each line. The optional symlink name is unused for the first entry and follows Linux library naming conventions for the remaining entries.

To utilize the new linux64p architecture, you must set the VOV_PORTABLE_ARCH environment variable to 1 prior to sourcing the vovrc script that sets up your shell to work with a VOV installation.

An overview of the process follows:

  1. Login to a RHEL 7.9 host or equivalent that has the patchelf utility installed and run the post-installation script: 
    $VOVDIR/../scripts/install-portable-arch.sh
  2. Login to a RHEL 6.10 host or equivalent, set the VOV_PORTABLE_ARCH environment variable to 1.
  3. Source the vovrc script for your shell.
  4. If using with Accelerator Plus, be sure to add the following line to vovwxd's config.tcl: 
    set CONFIG(exeleaf) "wxagent"

    By default, vovwxd will utilize the full path to the wxagent binary, which includes the VOV architecture directory (eg linux64).

    In the scenario where Accelerator Plus will be requesting taskers from a base queue that provides taskers that utilize the portable architecture to run on RHEL 6 or equivalent, then the exeleaf configuration setting in vovwxd's configuration file should be set to the name of the binary only. The PATH environment variable will then be used to find the wxagent in the portable architecture's bin directory (linux64p/bin) instead of the one that is used by vovwxd.