Hi Greg
I am replying to the group, hoping that it might resonate with some
other users like us, as well. I am going on a limb and jump directly to
the locking up issue, without referring to any peculiarities about the HP
Z4 and Alma 9 combination. Since you mentioned network based
authentication, I am presuming that you have a LDAP backend server to
authenticate your users (which is the model we are using in all our Linux
boxes, irrespective of the OS vintage). Since 'sssd' is the daemon that
oversees the LDAP authentication/authorization process (perhaps with KRB5
as the first step), for 350+ user accounts, if your configuration has
enumeration turned ON, it can affect the response of the workstation front
end and might even freeze up, depending on how well your network
connectivity to the LDAP backend is.
Please forgive me if I am talking through my hat owing to a wrong
assumption on my part about your LDAP backend. In my case, the LDAP backend
database servers are run and maintained by our University IT with a fairly
large footprint. Our NMR hosts, therefore have to maintain a cache, since
the on-demand lookup of a user id can become quite slow if every host
has to wait to talk to one of the LDAP servers. Enumeration takes care of
this cache preparation. But it can also lead to a slow down of the system,
in a sporadic manner like you mentioned, in the above scenario.
Before we moved over to our University IT resource, we were
maintaining our own departmental LDAP server with the membership only in
hundreds and so network connectivity was not an issue in that case. A
server and a fallback were located in the same building and we didn't even
need enumeration, since the lookup was pretty quick.
That's my 2c on the topic. I will be eager to learn what other experiences
are out there in our community. By the way, I do have an HP Z4 vintage
workstation but we are running CentOS 7 on it currently with TS4.3.0.
But I have been dabbling with Alma 8 and 9 and the TS flavours as Virtual
Machines only.
Best Regards
Rajan
On Thu, Oct 26, 2023 at 3:17 PM <gregory.wylie_at_chem.tamu.edu> wrote:
> Hello Everyone
>
> We have been playing with Alma 9 on two HP Z4 workstations (identical,
> bought at same time) like Bruker has been shipping with their
> spectrometers. Topspin 3.6.5, 4.2.0, and 4.3.0 have all installed with
> minimal effort, and we have used them as workstations but have not tried
> controlling a console yet (but I don't foresee any real issues there).
> During the Alma installation we are selecting the workstation package
> option along with a few extra packages. For the Varian systems we can load
> VnmrJ 4.2A, but it will not run a console due to the insecure communication
> protocols the console requires. So virtual box to the rescue! We
> successfully installed an image of a CentOS 6 build and ran a DD1 console.
> So, all in all, we are very happy.......BUT.....
>
> In the process of rebuilding all of our computers we decided to start with
> our data servers/workstations, so we deployed one of these HP Z4
> workstations. This system was configured with a second hard drive for data,
> and built with all 350+ user accounts. We use network authentication for
> users to login so we do not have to do password management. Unfortunately,
> this system started locking up after we got it fully setup and deployed. It
> seems to lock up at least every two days - mainly on a logout, but not
> always. Sometimes it locks up where you cannot login locally but you can
> still login remotely and do things. This was very strange to us and only a
> problem recently since its deployment, so we swapped out the computer and
> the second one... But it is doing the same thing now. We have run (32 GB
> ram) memory checks, etc. and are working on getting a different graphics
> card to see if that helps. We have not ruled out user errors either! Has
> anyone had any similar issues with Alma?
>
> Thanks
> Greg
>
> Gregory P. Wylie, Ph.D
> NMR Facility Manager
> Texas A&M University
> Department of Chemistry
> P.O. Box 30012
> College Station, TX 77843-3255
> gpwylie_at_tamu.edu
> 979.458.0705 (voice)
> 979.845.4719 (fax)
> 706.206.0007 (cell)
> http://nmr.tamu.edu
>
>
--
____________________________________
Rajan K Paranji, Ph.D.NMR Services Manager
*Department of Chemistry**Room 65, Bagley Hall*
University of WashingtonSeattle, WA 98195
phone : 206 685 2581 fax: 206 685 8665email: rajanp_at_uw.edu
____________________________________________________________________
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Received on Thu Oct 26 2023 - 16:39:25 MST