Announcement of new CTA public releases: 5.11.0.1-1 and 5.11.2.0-1

Releases
1

New CTA public releases

Dear CTA community,

We have made available two new versions of CTA in our stable repo:

Version 5.11.0.1-1 was deployed in production at CERN during the last week, in order to upgrade the catalogue schema version.
This was followed by the deployment of 5.11.2.0-1, today.

Both releases are exclusively Alma9.

Which version should I install?

  • If setting up CTA for the first time:
    • Install 5.11.2.0-1 directly.
  • If upgrading from a previous CTA version (more specifically, from 4/5.10.X.Y-Z):
    • First, install 5.11.0.1-1. This version is required to upgrade the CTA Catalogue version from 14.0 to 15.0 (for the instructions check the documentation on the automated update procedure).
    • After the CTA Catalogue schema migration is complete, install 5.11.2.0-1 to benefit from all the latest features and bug fixes.

Installation instructions:

Important:

  • These, and any other CTA releases, should be first tested in a safe environment before deploying into your production environment.
2

Hi Joao,

Thanks for this announcement.

Can I please confirm with you the EOS version that you have tested with above two CTA versions, 5.11.0.1-1 and 5.11.2.1-1?

Best,

George

3

Hi George,
in production we have been using eos 5.2.24 (CentOS7 and Alma9) and 5.2.27 (on Alma9 only).
On the EOS side at CERN everything is under Alma9 with eos 5.2.27.

Version 5.2.24 was the CentOS 7 to Alma 9 pivot version.

On Alma 9 you need to be careful with the openSSL version on the MGM: it must be > 3.2.2 to offer good X509 performance.

Best regards,
Julien Leduc

4

Hi Julien,

Many thanks for the confirmartion.

Best,

George

5

Hi Julien,

Today I tried to install cta-frontend-5.11.2 from cta-public-repo, while cta-frontend-5.11.2 requires xrootd 5.6.1. Is it correct? Or should it be xrootd 5.7.1?

6

Hi @biyujiang,
this is correct: cta-frontend-5.11.2.0-1 still requires xrootd 5.6.1 rpm.
The next cta release will move to xrootd 5.7.1.

Best regards,
Julien Leduc

7

Hi @jleduc

It was mentioned in the CTA DB upgrade hands-on session of the CTA workshop last week that it is possible to update the DB schema without service downtime (although the tape drives should be kept DOWN).

Just want to confirm once again if this is true.

As far as I remember, our DBAs request all DB connections (cta-frontend and cta-taped) to be stopped but I think this is for the purpose of taking a schema backup/sanpshot before the upgrade.

Best,

George

8

Hi @george_patargias,
indeed I have always performed DB schema upgrade with no service downtime at CERN.
Once all the cta-taped and cta-frontend are running the pivot version you can upgrade the catalogue schema to the next one. It is compatible with the pivot CTA version and the next CTA version (that starts using some of the new schema features).
This allows you to have some frontends and cta-taped running the pivot version or the next CTA release in production. Hence no full service downtime needed.

Best regards,
Julien Leduc

9

Thanks for the heads up Julien, I will try to do the upgrade your way!

We will need to test that both the pivot version (5.11.0.1-1) and 5.11.2.0-1 will work
with the EOS 5.2.23 that we are currently running on the EOS buffer. It should work
I thinkbut we we will double check.

Best,

George

10

Hi Julien,

The xrootd-5.6.1 has a problem with TLS enabled EOS (issued here), which will cause cta-taped fails to read files from EOS.

Perhaps a cta version 5.11.2 with xrootd 5.7.x is a good idea?

Best regards,
Yujiang

11

Hi @biyujiang,
I am deploying cta 5.11.7.0-1 in production at CERN with xrootd upgrade and a move to eos 5.3.10.
We’ll flag it for stable beginning of next week with the corresponding release announcement.
You can get it today if you want to test it from CTA testing repository.

Best regards,
Julien Leduc