[StarCluster] status of HPC instance type

[Brian O'Connor]

Hi Justin,

Thanks for the quick reply.  I did a checkout of StarCluster from git
this evening, installed it following the directions on your site and
ended up getting the following error:

[boconnor at oslo StarCluster]$ starcluster listclusters
StarCluster - (http://web.mit.edu/starcluster) (v. 0.9999)
Software Tools for Academics and Researchers (STAR)
Please submit bug reports to starcluster at mit.edu

-------------------------------------
masters (security group: @sc-masters)
-------------------------------------
cli.py:152 - ERROR - instance  has no alias

I installed using python2.6 and this setup pulled in boto-2.0b3.

I installed using (python 2.6):

sudo python ez_setup.py
sudo python setup.py install

Do you know what could be wrong?

I also tried "starcluster start -c dev-node dev-node-brian" and was
able to launch a node without issues so this must be something in
particular with listclusters.

Finally, I tired launching an EBS backed AMI on an HPC node.  This
worked but there are two issues.  First, some error messages:

>>> Validating cluster template settings...
>>> Cluster template settings are valid
>>> Starting cluster...
>>> Launching a 1-node cluster...
>>> Launching master (ami: ami-30b84d59, type: cc1.4xlarge)
>>> Creating security group @sc-dev-node-brian...
EC2ResponseError: 400 Bad Request
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Response><Errors><Error><Code>InvalidPlacementGroup.Unknown</Code><Message>The
placement group '@sc-dev-node-brian' is
unknown.</Message></Error></Errors><RequestID>00869090-d93a-4013-867f-6d5acc592420</RequestID></Response>
>>> Creating placement group @sc-dev-node-brian...
Reservation:r-5d31f237
>>> Waiting for cluster to start...

This seemed to be harmless since it eventually started.

Second, and this is less a bug than a request, when I launch the
ami-30b84d59 image I don't get the 1.7T of instance storage
pre-configured as I do with the non-EBS starcluster images.  Here's
the output from fdisk:

Disk /dev/xvdb: 901.8 GB, 901874450432 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 109646 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk /dev/xvdb doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/xvdc: 901.8 GB, 901874450432 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 109646 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk /dev/xvdc doesn't contain a valid partition table

I can write a plugin to partition and format this device but do you
know if there's any way to get this to be either setup by Starcluster
or by some other means?  Do you know if there's a way to avoid having
to reformat the device every time I launch the nodes?  I found this
posting helpful:

http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/message.jspa?messageID=186874

Thanks for your help

--Brian O'Connor

On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 3:04 PM, Justin Riley <justin.t.riley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/18/2010 03:02 PM, Justin Riley wrote:
>> The github code now supports starting/stopping EBS clusters. The stop
>> command will stop any EBS-backed instances rather than terminating them.
>
> This of course means that you can resume the EBS cluster later on using
> the 'start' command without losing any data on the disks.
>
> ~Justin
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